


Flying To Wyoming

by R_W_Daniels



Series: Flying To Wyoming [1]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Action, Age Difference, Alcohol, Apocalypse, Awkward Adolescent Feelings, Bonding, Complete, Drama, Drugs, Humor, Lemon, Motorcycles, Multi, Original Character(s), Rape, Sexual Inexperience, Violence, Weapons, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-06-18
Packaged: 2018-01-19 03:07:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 20
Words: 137,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1453168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R_W_Daniels/pseuds/R_W_Daniels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ellie and Joel have made it out of Pittsburgh, leaving their new friends behind, dead in the ground. Wyoming is months away and Ellie is struggling with both Joel's cold demeanor and her growing attraction to him. Add to this the guilt she feels towards Riley for moving on from her so quickly and Ellie has a lot to think about on this journey. For his part, Joel doesn't realize that Ellie is thinking of him in that way. He certainly doesn't think of this young girl like that and he never could... right?</p><p>New updates every Wednesday and Saturday until all twenty chapters are up!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Henry And Sam

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure most fans of The Last of Us have seen that great concept art illustration of Joel and Ellie laughing around a campfire. It's my favorite image of them and one that I wish had been used in the game at some point. I've always assumed that it captured a moment somewhere between Jackson and Boulder, after Joel had finally decided to accept Ellie as family. But what if Joel had almost made that decision earlier? What if, during the long trip from Pittsburgh to Jackson, Ellie had managed to charm her way into his heart, slipping past all the barricades he had erected there down through the years. What if he had begun to feel close to her? How hard would he have to struggle to push her away and close himself off again as they neared Wyoming?
> 
> Also, let's face it, walking from Pennsylvania to Wyoming is pretty daunting. Taking into account the fact that an older guy and a younger girl can only walk so fast, and that they would have to rest, forage, fight, and recover along the way, making and breaking camp every day, they'd be lucky to make thirty miles a day, on average. I wanted to know how they could accomplish such a thing and still look so healthy and happy when they reached Tommy, rather than appearing as two gaunt, disheveled people who looked like they'd just escaped from a death march. I felt they needed a vehicle of some sort to make that happen. This story will address that.
> 
> This story also deals with Ellie's inner monologue, showing her struggles between wanting to appear tough to Joel and the world, while at the same time feeling vulnerable, scared, and lonely, and needing to keep those emotions hidden from everyone. Over the course of the story, in future chapters, she finds herself becoming attracted to Joel (quite naturally, given her circumstances) and tries to come to terms with that desire when contrasted against her own self-perception as a lesbian -- probably. She's not entirely sure. Maybe she's actually bisexual? She's not certain at first and works to better understand both herself and him. Joel, for his part, isn't even aware that she's going through this struggle -- for most of the story anyway. ;-)
> 
> Lastly, I'd like to thank everyone who bothers to read this. My significant other, Michelle, was big help in getting Ellie's internal voice as feminine and as teenager-y as possible. I don't have much experience with the struggles and doubts that a young woman goes through, and Michelle was vital to capturing the essence of that. Thanks, gorgeous. I owe you one. :D
> 
> This is also my very first fanfic ever, so don't judge me too harshly. I'm giving it my best shot!

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 01 – Henry and Sam**

 

The gas station was deserted. It had been for a long time, from the look of things. Like most everything else in this world.

“Par for the course,” Joel muttered.

Lying prone in the tall grass next to him, Ellie looked at her burly, aging protector as he peered through the scoped hunting rifle at the buildings down the road. An ‘off-ramp’ he had called it. Only fourteen and somewhat small for her age, Ellie felt very tiny next to him. If she thought she could get away with it, she would have inched a little bit closer to him to feel a little safer. This place was creepy to her for some reason. But they had only been traveling together a short while and he didn’t like to be crowded.

“What for the what?” She kept her voice low to match his.

_Stay quiet. Whatever he does, you do. That’s worked so far. And so far, so good. Mostly._

“It means this situation’s about what I thought it would be,” he said quietly. He was beginning to get used to explaining things to her. He didn’t even seem irritated by it anymore. Most of the time, at least.

“Oh, okay. Got it.” She didn’t. Not really. But she filed it away for later contemplation. She did that a lot lately now that she was traveling with him. He remembered how it was, before the outbreak. He had knowledge of the world that was long gone by the time she showed up, and he didn’t mind sharing it. Most of the time, at least.

He lowered the rifle and turned his face to look at her. She instantly straightened up under his gaze – or as best as a girl can do when she’s lying on a grassy embankment on the side of the road just inside the Ohio border on a warm summer morning in ruined America.

_Gotta impress him. He’s finally starting to trust me. I can’t let him think I’m deadweight. Not for one fucking second._

The little Beretta pistol in her hand was proof of his trust in her. She squeezed the handle to remind herself of how far they had come together. He had given this to her. She wasn’t helpless anymore. She owed him for that. Big time.

“Alright. We’re gonna sneak down there, real quiet, and check it out. Understand?”

She nodded.

“We get in and out. _Quick_. We’re just lookin’ for a little food. Just enough to keep us goin’ until we find a safer place to hit up for supplies. No drama, no problems. Yeah?”

She nodded again. “I’ll do whatever you tell me to do, Joel. You know that.”

He nodded back. Almost smiled. “You’re doin’ fine, Ellie. Just keep your eyes open.”

It was the first compliment he had given her since they had buried the brothers just two days ago. The first killed by the other’s hand. And then the other killed by his own hand. Joel hadn’t wanted to bury them, but she had practically begged him to do it. There may have even been a few tears, if she wanted to be honest. She didn’t cry over much in this world, but they had been friends, for a little while at least, and friends deserved something better than being left to rot inside the old radio tower. And if she’d had to squirt a little from her eyes to bring him around, then that was just her doing what she had to do. And it wasn’t really manipulation. Not really. The tears were real. She just chose to let them flow that time instead of holding them in like she usually did. She’d even managed to use her wet eyes to coax a few good words from him as they stood over the graves.

_We’d been wearing our backpacks, ready to hit the road as soon as he was done filling the dirt in over… them._

Two forms wrapped in their blankets. The blood from the gunshot wounds had seeped through the fabric. She tried very hard not to see the stains.

He had dug the graves about three feet deep and lowered them in. He wouldn’t allow her to help. All she could do was stand there, wringing her hands, and watching him work. Henry and Sam went into the ground just before noon. To a good rest, she had hoped.

Why hadn’t she said something different to Sam? Why did she have to tell him that she didn’t believe in Heaven? Sometimes she did. Why did she have to play it all cool like that? Did she just want to appear more grown up to him? Flaunt her extra year or so on this earth? Put him in his 'little kid' place, somehow? What could it have hurt to tell him that, you know, maybe Heaven was real? Or at least it was a good idea.

_Why didn’t I think to say something like that instead?_

The infection was inside him but he’d kept it to himself. He was only a kid, even younger than her, and he needed someone more than ever on that last night but she had left him alone to go shoot the shit with Joel and Henry one more time before bed. She’d left him behind in the 'kid’s room' that Henry had banished him to so the grownups could talk. She was so pleased the Joel had signaled for her to sit next to him instead of leaving the room, she never even stopped to think about how Sam must have felt as he went up those steps by himself. She had left him alone up there. Left him with the wrong words echoing in his ears. Hopeless words. Cruel words.

Her words.

_I’m so, so sorry, Sam._

_I couldn’t leave you again without saying something right... Without saying goodbye, at least. But I don’t know what the fuck you’re supposed to say for things like burials._

_Thank God, you did, Joel._

The words had been simple and delivered almost by rote. He only stumbled in a few places, like he was trying to remember what to say. Out of practice, it seemed to her. The words were an old memory that he didn’t want to dredge up again. Joel wasn’t much for rituals anymore. But he did it this one time, just for her. She owed him for that too.

_How many people have you buried, Joel? Were they your friends? Your family? Your hunter buddies? Your victims? How many times have you said those words? And how long has it been since you stopped saying them? You didn’t say anything for Tess when we left her behind too. But maybe it’s because there wasn’t time? I hope that’s all it was._

She had wanted to ask him all day yesterday and today about the woman she’d so briefly known, but Tess was off limits. He’d been crystal clear about that. She’d risked it once before, just for a moment while they were in Lincoln with Bill. Joel hadn’t yelled at her for doing it, but she didn’t want to press her luck again. Not for a while, anyway.

She had bowed her head when Joel began to speak over the graves of their friends. She didn’t know if he had or not. She hadn’t dared to open her eyes while he was speaking. She reached out and held his hand for the half a minute or so that it took. He had been kind enough to let her. She wouldn’t forget it.

“All right now, Ellie…”

He wasn’t looking at her anymore, but he was speaking to her again. She snapped back to the here and now. Hopefully, he hadn’t noticed her drifting for a moment there.

“No tellin’ what we might run into down there once we get off this interstate.”

“I-70.”

She had to show him she had been paying attention. She wasn’t deadweight. She wasn’t.

“That’s right, Ellie. I-70. And that service station down there is pretty remote. Nothing too near it. So if we play this right, we can dash down there – _carefully_ ,” he added for emphasis. “Pick up a few things and get back up here and on our way again. But we gotta be quick. You ready?”

_Don’t fuck this up, Ellie. Do good! Do good and he won’t leave you like the others did. It can be different this time. It can._

She squeezed the pistol’s grip again, drawing strength from it.

“Totally.”

“All right, then. Let’s go, kid. _Carefully_. And try to stay clear of those broken down cars over there on the ramp. Just in case.”

“Right behind you, Joel.”

They dashed down the grassy bank and onto the concrete and asphalt, moving in the way that he had taught her. One person moves to cover, the other person hangs back and keeps an eye on things. Then catch up to the first person and do it again. Easy. She followed his tracks exactly when he signaled her to come to him and then kept her pistol gripped in both hands, ready for action, covering him while he ran to the next bit of cover he had picked out ahead. From the guardrail… to the light post… to the support column… to… whatever that weird gray box on the edge of the curb was.

_Stay low. Move fast._

_He always knows where to go. Stick close. He’ll get us through this, no problem._

In no time at all, they had reached the edge of the service station parking lot. Only a couple of rusted cars occupied the cracked, asphalt lot. A few more were rusting away in the street across from it. One looked like it had been on fire once. Grass was slowly reclaiming this place, just like everywhere else. A pretty spray of purple flowers were growing next to the front tire of a small, gold car.

There were two buildings. A large one and a smaller one behind that looked like a shed of some sort. The giant sign that marked the boundary of the parking lot was an empty frame bordered with shards of faded white plastic. She wondered what it had looked like in the past, before everything got broken. Nice, probably. And clean.

_Wish we still had a ride. Things were easier with that truck. Fucking hunters. They’re dead now and the more I think about it, the less that bothers me. And it not bothering me is starting to bother me a little. Fuck, this is complicated._

“Okay. Let’s move up to the front door. Have a look-see.”

“Right.” She watched as he jogged to a trash drum near the big windows of the main building and crouched down.

_'Look-see.' He’s always using words like that. 'Reckon,' 'rowdy,' 'gander.' That’s just how he talks, I guess._

She found his vocabulary endearing. The words were cute, even when spoken in his gruff baritone. But she was afraid to start using them herself.

_What if he thought I was mocking him? Can’t risk it. No matter how much I’m dying to use 'gander' in a sentence, I need him to like me. If he likes me, he’ll keep taking care of me. Maybe even after we get to Wyoming. Maybe he’ll ask me to stick around. A girl can dream, after all._

He signaled to her and she ran fast, staying low. She reached his position quickly and pressed herself against the wall next to him.

“I tried to get a good look on my way over. I didn’t see anyone inside,” she hissed, trying to keep her voice as low as possible.

_Good. Smart. Be useful to him. And make sure he knows it!_

“Me neither,” he whispered. “Looks like this place is empty. Let’s find out for sure. Check the door. I’ll cover you.”

“Just say when.”

He readied his shotgun and popped up, pointing it into the store. She rushed to the door.

All the windows in the doorframe and the window frames around it were broken. The door was warped so badly, it would never close again. From the looks of it, someone had hooked a chain to it and pulled it open with a truck or something. Deep scrapes in the floor tiles indicated that something very heavy had been dragged out of here years ago.

“Door’s open!” Too far away from him to whisper now.

“I go in first, Ellie!”

She wanted to protest but he was already on the move, his shotgun sweeping the entire storefront as he went.

_I could do this! Why won’t he give me a chance?_

Inside now, moving fast. She stuck close and covered his blind side. They swept through the building. Checking corners, looking behind counters, inside the long drink fridge, the manager’s office, the small storeroom. Fast but careful. She mimicked him, doing it just like he had taught her.

No one. Empty.

“All right, kid. I think it’s clear in here. Start looking for supplies while I check the restrooms out back.”

“I’m coming with you!”

He shot her a withering look and she did her best not to shy away from it.

“But what if there’s trouble?” she asked, trying to sound more forceful than she felt.

“Don’t you worry about me. See what you can find in here.”

She nodded half-heartedly, obeying. He was through the door and gone around the side of the building in a flash. She looked at the pistol in her hand.

_You’ve trusted me this much. Why can’t you trust me a little more? I can be valuable to you, damn it. I’m not a fucking baby._

She sighed audibly, hoping that he wouldn’t be able to hear her, and began to check the usual places. But there was no point. This place was picked clean. Years ago, from the looks of it. Some old candy wrappers. A few empty soda cans. Wadded up old wrappers and a sack from some place called Jack In The Box – they were open all night, apparently. A few tattered, old plastic grocery bags drifted slowly around on the floor near the broken front windows. There were old bullet holes in the wall above the soda machine and the scratch-off lottery ticket case. Another set of smaller holes marred the inside of the doorframe in a tight pattern. Probably buckshot. Somebody had been firing out while several other somebodies had been firing in. The holes were not very old but it looked like spiders had moved into a couple of them. She shied away from them when she noticed this.

_You guys can keep your holes. Creepy little fucks._

Walking the pathway between the short aisles of empty shelves, idly scratching off a few lottery tickets; she noticed several spent, sea green shotgun shells on the floor near the empty potato chip rack. They weren’t faded out by the sun like everything else in here. She picked one up and sniffed it. The acrid smell of gunpowder, faint but unmistakable.

_Fresh or fresh-ish, at least. Somebody’s been in here very recently. Maybe yesterday? Joel needs to know._

She spied two unspent shells that had rolled under the edge of a display stand that once held candy bars. There was a faded sale sign held in place by ancient, yellowed tape that said ‘King-sized! Two for three dollars. This weekend only!’

“Wish I had three dollars to buy some candy… and some fucking candy to buy would be nice too.”

_Who am I kidding? I wouldn’t buy it. I’d just swipe some and hope to get away with it._

She crouched down and pocketed the pair of good shells. Maybe Joel could use them.

She looked around one more time. Just to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. A sign on the wall told her that this was the Shell Oil Station. Pennzoil was on sale by the quart this week, gasoline was only $3.39 a gallon, and if she signed up for a credit card today, she would get a free lube job – 100% complete and thorough! – the next time she visited a Jiffy Lube (also owned by the Shell Oil Company).

“What the hell is a credit card?” she asked no one in particular.

And what the fuck was a Jiffy Lube? She’d heard of Jiffy Pop. It was tasty popcorn. They’d given it to the students as a rare Fourth of July treat back when she was about nine or ten. They’d sat them down in the auditorium of the orphanage and served them grape Kool-aid and dry popcorn while they sang songs about how much they loved America. Then they’d watched that Chuck Norris movie, 'Invasion USA'. It had been pretty awesome. There were explosions, weird boats pushed by giant fans skimming along the swamps, loads of karate kicks, and the bad guy went around shooting everyone in the balls.

_That movie was so fucking cool. Gotta ask Joel if he’s seen it. I’ll bet it’s exactly the kind of movie he likes._

_I wonder if he’s ever shot anybody in the balls? Probably. Ouch. Just thinking about that makes the balls I don’t even have hurt like hell. Yeeesh._

She pulled off a faded application from the credit card display and studied it. It wanted her to fill out all kinds of information. Many of the things it was asking for meant nothing to her at all. Previous residence? Referrals? Annual income? SSN? DLN? Two phone numbers? E-mail address? She could also apply online. Maybe they did most of the work for you if got in that line and did it that way?

_Sheesh. Why would anyone want one of these things if they made it this hard to get one? Probably so no one could use the coupon. Cheap fucks._

The coupon itself was printed on the bottom of the form and she found that much easier to understand. Come in to Jiffy Lube, get lubed up for free. No service charge. No annual fee. No commitments. Simple as that. Sounded like a good deal, really. Especially if you needed some lubing and you were poor. She knew about lube, of course. Well, sort of. She’d heard the older girls at the orphanage talking about it and had a pretty good idea what it was for. Kind of. Something about your butt, she was pretty sure of that part.

_Heck, I’ve never been lubed up in my life. I wonder what it’s like? Messy, I bet. Greasy. But probably a lot of fun too. I don’t know how it works, exactly, but the older girls talked about it like it was a pretty damn good time. And this guy in the picture looks very happy about his time spent at Jiffy Lube. Look at that smile! And there doesn’t seem to be an age requirement. Everybody’s welcome at Jiffy Lube, I guess. Bring the whole family. Eat all the corn you want and come on down to see us._

_I wonder if they provided paper towels and soap? Or did you have to bring your own? They’re not charging, you anything, so I’d bet you had to bring your own stuff. Still, sounds like a great deal. And, man, I bet pooping would be a breeze for, like, a whole month after a trip to the ol’ Jiffy Lube._

She groaned in disappointment as she read the fine print on the coupon.

_Fuck. This coupon expired twenty years ago. Damn it. I’ve missed out on so many things._

She pocketed the coupon anyway and pondered some of the interesting questions that had been raised, now that she had time to give it a little thought.

First and foremost, why on earth would Jiffy Pop get into the lube business? Lube? And popcorn? Together? Was there money in that sort of thing once upon a time? Did they use the lube to pop the corn? Like cooking oil? Or did you put the lube on the corn after it was popped… For some… other… reason? Where would you want to put greasy kernels of popcorn anyway? And why? She couldn’t make those two things fit together in her head, no matter how hard she tried.

_And you’d think the lube would help!_

She giggled at her own joke and thought about asking Joel. She decided to save the coupon and the questions for later.

From behind the store, she heard a dull thump. She ran to the side window, gun ready.

“JOEL?”

His voice came from around the side “I’m fine. Men’s room door was locked. I had to open it.”

By kicking it in, no doubt. Kicking in doors was one of Joel’s favorite things to do. Why pry it open or learn to use lock picks when you could just kick the shit out of stuff.

_Can’t wait until I’m big enough to do cool stuff like that. Come on, bones! Grow already! And boobs, you need to get it in gear too. That’s an order!_

She took one more look around the place, lingering again on the empty candy rack. Nothing more to see in here. She hopped through the window frame and went around to join him.

She was almost at the corner when he heard another dull thump.

“Women’s room locked too?” she called out.

Nothing. She trotted around the corner, raising her Beretta.

There was an old red motorcycle back here. It must have been fancy once upon a time. It looked sleek, like something she might see in one of the comic books she had stuffed in her backpack. A helmet that matched the color of the bike hung from one of the handlebars. A faded black denim jacket with leather shoulder panels and cuffs draped over the oddly shaped seat—the back of it was half higher up than the front half. Tantalizing items poked out of the open compartments by the back tires. The strange seat wasn’t dusty at all. Had someone driven it here?

_Holy fuck! Does this thing still run?_

She looked about for Joel, to tell him of her amazing discovery (and also to share the good news about the twenty five dollars she’d won on the scratch-off). She found him just a few feet away, shotgun in his off hand, standing rock still and pointing his revolver into the open doorway of the women’s room.

“Infected?” she asked, moving to close the gap to him.

“Ellie! Stay back!” He barked, never even looking at her.

“What? What’s wrong?” She slowed her pace but continued to move in his direction.

She heard something. A woman’s voice! It was coming from somewhere inside the small bathroom. Ellie could hear it now, but couldn’t make out what she was saying.

“Joel?” Worried now.

_Please, no. Please tell me you’re not holding someone up, Joel. We’re not that hungry. Don’t do anything bad. Please. I don’t want to see you that way. We don’t need her bike. I can walk to Wyoming if I have to._

”Goddammit, Ellie! Stay the fuck back, I said!” He froze her in place with his voice.

_Okay. Okay. I’ll do whatever you say. Don’t be mad. I’m just trying to help. I just want us to do the right thing here._

The woman was a few feet inside from the doorway. Ellie could see her as a shadow almost swallowed up by the deeper shadows around her.

_Infected? No. Can’t be. Infected people don’t talk. They never talk! I know!_

The woman’s head was lowered meekly and she was speaking softly. It sounded like she was on the edge of tears.

_What the fuck is she saying?_

_Please don’t rob her, Joel. She’s scared. Just let her go. Please. I’d be scared too. I don’t want us to do this. This isn’t us, Joel. It isn’t us!_

“Joel?” Ellie’s voice was very soft. “Let her go. Okay? Please?”

“Please.” The woman’s voice carried to her. Soft. Wet. Thick. Barely a word.

_Oh, God. She’s so scared. Please just let her go, Joel. Please._

“I’m sorry,” he said flatly, the way he did when he had spoken to the few hunters who had fruitlessly begged for their lives three days ago in Pittsburgh. He wasn’t saying the words to Ellie.

He pulled the trigger and the woman flew backwards, illuminated in the light of the muzzle flash.

“JOEL!”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that does it for this chapter. As you can see, Joel's relationship with Ellie is still a bit rocky. It will improve as the story goes along. Ellie is so adorkable, she can't help but have a bit of a mellowing effect on him, given enough time. Also, next time around there's a nice, short action scene, for people who like that sort of thing.
> 
> See you in a few days with Chapter Two: Over and Under.


	2. Over and Under

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie must deal with Joel’s decision to kill the woman hiding in the ladies room. He tries to make her understand, but his quick temper and unresolved anger over the death of Tess gets in the way of his good intentions.
> 
> Chapter two of Flying to Wyoming. New chapters every Wednesday and Saturday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Following their exploits in Pittsburgh, Joel and Ellie have formed a tenuous friendship. But in my take on the story, it's still a very delicate balance for them. Joel has a quick temper and Ellie is still skittish around him, especially when he's angry. She’s slow to trust any adult, given how most of them have treated her up to this point in her life.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 02 – Over And Under**

 

“What the fuck, Joel?” Ellie was devastated by what she had just witnessed. To know that he had killed innocent people in the past was one thing. To see it now, with her own eyes, it was almost too much to comprehend. “You didn’t have to kill her.”

“I had to,” was all he said.

“She said ‘please’! I heard her. She _spoke_!”

“That’s right. She did.” He turned his head to face her, almost furious with her. “And you should have done the same goddamn thing in my place! You can’t make it out here if you’re weak! Now don’t you start second guessin’ how I run this little outfit! You got it?!”

Ellie recoiled just a bit, suddenly frightened of him.

“S-sorry. I… I j-just…”

**Click… click click… Click…**

Her heart almost stopped. In a flash, Joel was shoving his revolver back into the waistband of his jeans and switching his shotgun to the ready position. He reached out to her with his now empty left hand.

“C’mere, Ellie.” He beckoned her closer, urgently.

She hesitated. She was terrified of clickers. But now she was afraid of him too.

_Oh fuck. This is getting bad. It’s all happening too fast!_

Across the lot, from the second, smaller building, a trio of clickers staggered out into the daylight, jerking and twitching their way towards them blindly, arms flailing wildly. The pair was in the open, with nothing to take cover behind and the building the clickers had been hiding in was less than twenty feet away.

“Goddammit! They were in the car wash the whole time! Get over here! _Now_!” He reached out, grabbing her by the twin collars of her shirts, pulling her roughly to him.

She yelped in fright. Her pistol fell from numb fingers, clattering across the ground. Her hands fumbled with his arm, trying to get free of him.

“No! NO!” She started, but he grabbed her around the waist, scooping her up one-handed and tossed her roughly into the ladies room before she could finish the thought. She went tumbling over the body of the dead woman, rolling under the long counter top that was fitted with a pair of sinks.

Joel pulled the door shut hard. “Stay in there!”

It was too damn dangerous out here for her, he knew. Three clickers, one of them fucking huge, no cover, nowhere to hide. They’d already been spotted, and on top of everything else, she’d dropped her goddamn gun. He’d never seen her so scared of the infected before. What the hell had come over her? She was usually tougher than this!

If he could just keep them away from the door, she’d probably be safe in there until he figured something out.

 

* * *

 

Only a small amount of light made it in under the door. Not enough to see by. Ellie found her flashlight, easily accessed in her pack’s side pocket. She too it out and clicked it on.

The woman had been shot in the forehead. She had probably been very pretty once, but twenty years on the road had weathered her. Asian and likely in her mid thirties, she wore an old San Diego State University long-sleeved t-shirt that had been white once but had become yellow with age. She also wore black denim jeans that, while faded with use, showed off her shapely legs. She sported some killer motorcycle boots with metal armor plates on the shins. Her brains were in a halo around her head, framed by her short black hair.

“Oh God,” Ellie whispered to her. “I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know why he did it. I’m –“

Her eyes were suddenly drawn to something metallic and dark, lying on the stall floor near them. It glittered menacingly, beckoning to her.

Outside, Joel fired his shotgun twice. The thick walls of the restroom dampened the sound significantly.

“Fuck you, Joel. Why would you do this to her? To me?” she muttered, feeling a hot flush of betrayal suffuse her face. She remembered the horrible flash of the revolver, the terrifying feel of his angry hands on her. She shuddered and tried to push it from her mind. She reached for the thing on the floor, unsure what it was.

Outside there was a strange, flat pop. Joel cursed loudly. Something heavy clattered to the ground.

Her hand made contact with the thing on the floor. Cold. Hard. She pulled it close to her.

It was a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun, short barrels stacked on top of the other, not side by side like she’d seen the bird hunters use back in the QZ, open at the breech, and cut so short at the stock it was almost carbine length. There had been a nylon sling for the gun, fitted to two metal rings, one in the forestock, one in the grip, but the strap had been torn into two ragged halves, probably in close combat. She studied the weapon closely. The dead woman had been very short, very petite. This must have been hers. Resized as it was for a small woman, it was the perfect length for a teenager like Ellie.

Outside, she heard Joel cursing again. He was exerting himself greatly, from the sound of things. Something thumped audibly against the side of the building.

_He needs me, the fucker. And I need him too._

_Fuck me, what do I do? Where’s my pistol? Where the fuck is my pistol? _

_The shells!_

She dug the two sea green shells from her pocket, the ones she had found lying amidst all the spent ones inside the store. She slid them into the open breech of the gun, one at a time. They were a perfect fit. She carefully pressed the two halves of the gun together, pivoting them at the hinge, until the weapon locked closed. She looked for a hammer, but found none.

_No hammer. Maybe it’s like a BB gun? Or Joel’s shotgun? The hammer is on the inside?_

She found the safety on the back of the frame, slid it forward until the red dot was revealed. Ready to fire. She took a deep breath, stood up, and walked to the door. She rested her fingers on the handle.

_You don’t deserve my help. But you’re going to get it anyway, you bastard. And don’t you ever touch me like that again. Not ever._

She threw open the door and the daylight poured in. She forgot to turn her flashlight off.

 

* * *

 

A clicker lay dead on the ground, most of its head missing. Resting on the ground close to it was Joel’s shotgun. Smoke was pouring from the half open ejection port, a warped red shell protruding from it. Misfire. Several feet away, Joel was trying to work a shiv into the back of a very large, wounded clicker’s skull. The man must have been a real powerhouse before he got infected. He had half a load of buckshot in him and Joel was still barely hanging on. The other, smaller clicker was spasmodically making her way to him.

_He’s not gonna make it! She’ll get her teeth into him before he can finish that big one off!_

She raised the shotgun at the smaller clicker, pointing it from the hip, double checking to make sure that Joel wasn’t going to be in the path of the scattering pellets, and pulled the trigger. It went off with a roar, spitting smoke and fire in a tremendous plume. It almost bucked itself out of her hands.

A huge chunk of semi-putrid flesh detonated violently from the flank of the clicker. Joel’s eyes went wide, seeing Ellie for the first time since he dumped her inside the safety of the ladies room. Despite his shock, well-honed reflexes allowed him to keep his grip on the overlarge clicker he was still trying to shiv.

The clicker she had wounded rounded on her. With the large wall as a backdrop for the rebounding sound, she realized that she must stand out to that thing’s echolocation like a bonfire in an open field at night. It screeched and charged her, immune to pain of the shotgun blast.

She pulled the trigger again. Again. Again! Nothing happened.

_Oh fuck!_

The clicker was closing the gap. She looked down at the gun. Had she loaded it wrong?

_Two triggers! There are TWO FUCKING TRIGGERS!_

She raised the gun up again, bringing the shortened stock to her shoulder, slipping her finger onto the forwardmost trigger. Behind the advancing clicker, she suddenly saw Joel, shiv in hand, racing to reach the monster before it could grab her.

“Joel! Get out of the way! MOVE!”

He dove aside a half-second before she triggered the second barrel. The recoil was manageable this time, directed into her shoulder as it was. The clicker’s head exploded in a shower of brains and fungus. Its legs continued to pump for another step, its momentum carrying it forward, falling onto Ellie, who couldn’t scramble out of the way in time.

_God, that was close! Fuck, this is nasty!_

Joel was there, his strong hands pulling the vile thing off her.

“Get it off! Get it off!” Kicking at it, pushing with her hands.

“I got it! Hold still.”

But she couldn’t. As soon as there was the tiniest opening, she slithered away, shotgun in hand.

“Fuck me! Agh! Oh fuck! Those things _stink_!”

"Are you okay?”

“I’m fine! I’m just grossed out! _Fuck_!” She stomped around in a tiny circle, as though stink and fear were something you could shake off.

“Where the fuck did you get that damn thing?” He was pointing at the shotgun.

“I took it off the woman you murdered! She doesn’t need it anymore, thanks to you!”

Ellie wheeled about, facing him as fiercely as she could manage.

“I can’t believe you killed her, Joel! What the fucking fuck?”

Angry again, Joel stalked over to her, and she felt her resolve begin to crumble. She took half a step back.

_Those hands. He’s going to grab me again. Or hit me… Or worse…_

“Gimme that damn gun!” His grabbed it in the center but she held onto it with both hands.

“No! Nonono! Please!”

“Give it here, Ellie!” he roared. It slipped from her hands.

She watched him work the large lever above the safety switch. The gun broke open and two green shells popped out with a funny ‘floomp’ing sound. Smoke trailed from them as they arced through the air and landed on the parking lot surface with a tinkling clatter.

“Joel… Please don’t take it away. I’m sorry I yelled at you. Please.” Her head was lowered, her voice penitent, her eyes on the shotgun. “Please. I’m sorry.”

“Ellie,” he began, his temper was still running hot but he was trying to speak calmly, “what if you’d –“

“But I didn’t!” she blurted out, her hands open before him, her eyes pleading with him. “I wouldn’t! I swear! I wouldn’t hurt you! I waited until you were out of the way before I fired. I know it happened all at once, but I didn’t touch that trigger until you were out of my line of fire! Just like you taught me!”

“Look,” he began, clearly working hard at calming himself down. “This may be too much gun for you, is all. I’d better hang on to it.”

“Fine. Fuck it. Whatever.” She stomped over to her fallen pistol and scooped it up, placing it in her back pocket defiantly. “I’ll be over here, in my fucking diaper, waiting for someone to change me.”

“Ellie…”

“Whatever, Joel.” She leaned against the wall of the gas station and looked out towards the highway, away from him, her arms crossed. “Just let me know when I’ve fucked up again, okay? If baby needs a bottle of milk, she’ll let you know.”

_He didn’t hit you. He wouldn’t hit you. It’s gonna be okay. You have to believe that._

Still carrying the shotgun, Joel strode to the motorcycle to give it a good looking over. “I swear to God…” he muttered.

Ellie watched him checking the bike, running his hands along cables, opening fill caps, squeezing fluid lines to test their integrity. She was incredibly curious about the process, but didn’t want to be in his presence at the moment. She went to search the woman in the bathroom. Joel noticed she was leaving but pretended not to.

 

* * *

 

“Christine L. Chau. Senior Research Assistant. ConAgra Foods R/D Labs - GMF Division.”

Ellie read the words on the laminated identification card, but could only understand half of them. She pocketed it for reasons of her own.

She next found a small yellow metal tin of ‘Anacin’ headache pills. The label, scratched and worn at the edges, described them as ‘Aspirin + Caffeine’ and ‘Trusted. Safe. Effective.’ The tin said it contained a dozen, but there were only three left. She slipped that into her pocket too.

The last item she pulled from the woman’s left front pocket was a small steel bottle top / can opener tool. She pocketed this as well.

 _Maybe I’ll get lucky and find some cans of juice. Or a bottle of beer. Assuming Joel thinks little Ellie is finally ready to make the switch from baby formula to something better, of course_.

She checked the other front pocket of Christine’s jeans and found a set of keys. There were several different types on the ring. A couple of house keys, a small one that looked to be for a locker or something, and two she couldn’t even guess at. One of them might be the key to the bike. The keychain was adorned with a round plastic fob. It was thick, clear acrylic, chipped in several places, with a circular photo sealed inside. Two happy people, a man and a woman, were smiling in closeup. They were Asian and Ellie recognized the woman as the same one lying on the ground before her. In the photo, she was younger, prettier, with long, amazing hair, and happy to be young, in love, and alive. Around the edges of the picture, it read ‘Terry + Kristi Chau. Five Year Anniversary.’

_Guess she is older than she looks. Was, I mean._

On the back of the fob, a more distant shot of the same couple showed them standing behind matching red motorcycles, one slightly larger than the other. Terry stood by the larger bike, Kristi by the smaller one, her hair draped over her shoulder in a long, cool braid. Terry’s motorcycle was the one parked out behind this store. The edge on this side of the photo read ‘Life is a journey. Take it together.’”

_Good advice, Kristi. But no one wants to take me with them._

Ellie pondered the keys and heaved a dramatic sigh. “He should see these, I guess.”

She placed her hand on the dead woman’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry this happened to you, Mrs. Chau. I couldn’t stop him. I tried. I really did. I hope you’ll forgive us for taking your motorcycle… Maybe you’ll be with Terry now. I don’t know… But I hope so.”

She got up and walked out of the room, turning her flashlight off this time, closing the door reverently behind her. The room was Kristi’s crypt now. Sacred.

 

* * *

 

Joel was rifling through the sculpted plastic saddlebags on the sides of the bike. There were several interesting things inside. The top compartment, behind the raised rear seat, was a helmet holder that stored a large, sturdy plastic jug inside. It probably held some kind of cleaning chemical once, but now smelled strongly of gasoline. Sadly, it was almost empty. The bike’s tank, however, had about two gallons of fuel in it. A third full, more or less. With the siphoning hose Bill had given him back in Lincoln, maybe…

“Her name was Kristi Chau,” said Ellie, coming towards him, her hands stuffed in her front pockets.

“What?” Joel asked, looking up from the far side of the bike to face her as she approached.

“Kristi Chau. That’s the name of the woman you killed. I found her ID card. I found these too.” She tossed the keys to him, which he caught easily.

Good timing, he thought. I was just about to try hotwiring this thing.

“Ellie, listen –“ he began, wanting to smooth things over now that things had quieted down some, now that he had cooled off some.

“What’s there to say, Joel? It’s done. Let’s forget it.” She sounded very tired.

He was calmer now, ready to navigate these waters.

“I didn’t murder her, Ellie.”

“Call it whatever you like, Joel. Okay? Let’s just drop it.”

“She was turnin’, Ellie. Killin’ her was a mercy.”

He suddenly wanted to tell her he had been thinking of Tess when it happened. He had dreamed of her the night before, and two nights before that. He wanted to say that he couldn’t get Tess out of his mind, that the past wasn’t staying buried like it was supposed to, which was why he had snapped at her when he had seen the bitten woman. It had been too much all at once. But he was going to be damned before he explained himself to a fourteen-year-old kid who didn’t know shit about the world.

There’s so damn many things I wanted to say to Tess, he thought. I never took the time… never worked up the nerve to take the damn risk… and now I’ll never get the chance.

“Bullshit. I heard her speak, Joel. Infected don’t talk.” She stood near the bike, not making eye contact, her hands still in her denim pockets, her face angry.

His eyes narrowed and his lips became a thin crease.

Shut the fuck up, Ellie, he thought. I’m not in the mood for this crap now. Just give your damn mouth a rest. Just for two damn minutes. Can’t you see I’m _trying_ here?

“Infected don’t _talk_ ,” she insisted with a swipe of her hand, upset that he was ignoring her point, like she was going to go away or something if he just pretended she wasn’t there.

"Goddammit, Ellie!”

He came around to her in quick strides. She took a step back from him, her eyes widening a little. She raised her open hands defensively, as if in supplication. He stopped, drew a deep, slow breath and reminded himself which one of them was the grownup here.

Damn it, Ellie. I wasn’t gonna hit you, he thought. I’d never hit you. I just need you to listen to me. Don’t look at me like that.

He took a deep breath, rubbed his brow for a moment. Tried very hard to calm down.

“She tried to speak, Ellie. You’re right about that. But she wasn’t able to say much.”

“She said ‘please’. I heard her _say_ it.” Her voice was very small now, but she doggedly defended the woman.

“She did. It was about the only word she managed to say. Maybe because she was repeatin’ you. I don’t know. But she _was_ turnin’. I promise you, she was.”

“Joel… If you… I… Okay… Whatever you say. Alright?” She shrugged her shoulders in defeat and looked down at her shoes. Her hands hung limply at her sides.

_Can we please stop fighting, Joel. I don’t want to do this anymore. Let’s just go back to the way we were before._

“Look, Ellie,” he said, summoning all the patience at his disposal. “It doesn’t happen very often. But sometimes, when a person is being taken over by Cordyceps, there’s a small span of time where the person has just enough control of their own body to resist the impulses the infection is sendin’ them. It’s like a tug of war – One the person can’t win. They can’t make their own muscles move, but neither can the infection. And for a while, they’re in a kind of in-between state. They don’t shake. They don’t twitch. They don’t move much at all. They just stand there, like a mannequin in a department store window. I’ve seen it with my own eyes a few times.” He reached out for her shoulder and she didn’t flinch away. “ _I saw it in her, Ellie_. She was strugglin’.”

Silence. Still not looking at him.

“She was tryin’ to talk, but not having much luck. The infection was tellin’ her to look at me, to attack me, but she was usin’ everything she had to make her eyes keep lookin’ away from me. Tryin’ not to trigger the attack.”

“But I looked at her, Joel. When I was searching her. She didn’t look infected to me.”

“It hits everybody different, Ellie. Some, like Sam…” Joel continued, noticing her wince at the boy’s name, “They show it pretty strongly, almost right away. Blisters and swollen veins and such. Others hardly show it at all. You just about have to look at their eyes to tell. A few, a very few, they don’t show at all. Not in the beginnin’, anyway. Those are the most dangerous ones. You look at ‘em, they seem okay, maybe a bit dazed or somethin’, and you can’t put it together fast enough. They’re on you before you’ve realized they’ve turned. I lost two guys in my old group that way. Back in Memphis, we got there just after the QZ fell. Craig’s girlfriend Nicki had been bit on the back of her arm while we were searching for supplies. Didn’t tell anyone. That night, Nicki… we thought she was just lookin’ at the bonfires… where the bodies of the soldiers and bureaucrats were being burned in piles all over the city… She just seemed… quiet, you know… But then… Craig, he…”

He let the words die in his mouth. He wondered when he had last spoken so many words, all at once like that. Stringing together sentences was not particularly his favorite thing to do. He had never exactly been all that much of a talker.

What the hell is it about this kid, he wondered. How does she get me to talking like this?

“You… You’re not kidding about this?” Her face was still aligned along her shoulder, but her eyes slowly turned toward his. Her hands were clasped in front of her. She was skeptical, but hopeful.

“No. I’m not kiddin’, Ellie. I’ve seen it happen a few times before. It’s real rare. I think the person has to have an incredible amount of willpower or somethin’. I don’t know. But it _does happen_ , kid. I wasn’t sure what I was seein’ at first,” he gestured at the bathroom door behind her. “But then I saw the blood on her left hand, drippin’ from her little finger…”

_I never thought to look at her hands. I never even thought to see if she was still wearing a wedding ring. Fuck, I never even rolled her over to check her back pockets. I didn’t want to see… the inside of her skull…_

“Then why didn’t you say something? Why did you yell at me, Joel?”

_Why did you grab me like that? Scare me like that?_

“We got attacked by clickers. You froze up. And the next thing I knew, you were pointin' a shotgun at me,” he said matter-of-factly.

_It wasn’t the clickers I was afraid of…_

“I said I was sorry about that.” Facing him now, riding the fence between forgiveness and sullenness. She was tugging at her fingers.

“And you were also bein’ a real pain in the ass, Ellie.” He wanted it to sound friendly, teasing. But he was long out of practice at that sort of thing.

“Like I was the only one.” Looking away again. Sullen. Arms crossed.

_Just say you’re sorry, you ass. I want to put this behind us. Come on._

Joel took another deep breath.

Lord, he thought, this child may be the salvation of the human race. Please help me not to strangle her right here in Ohio, in the parking lot of this Shell Station

“Here, I’ve got somethin’ for you.” He walked over to the bike and took a small handkerchief bundle out of one of the molded plastic saddlebags. Like so many men with female problems before him, bribery was his last resort.

“What is it? A baby bottle? Is it time to put me down for a nap already?”

Right here in this very parking lot, Lord, he thought. Unless you do something about her attitude pretty damn quick.

He tossed the small bundle to her, trying to sound friendly. “See for yourself, kid.”

She caught it. It felt like it was full of heavy magic markers or something. Nimble fingers made quick work of the simple knot. Inside were a small handful of sea green shotgun shells, nine in all. She was lost in the moment, surprised.

“28 gauge. A good shotgun for someone your size.” He was holding it out to her, a peace offering. “Kristi took good care of it. It’s in great condition.”

Forgiveness comes easy from a fourteen year old when you give her the gift of heavy firepower.

She took it greedily. Broke it open as she had watched him do earlier, slid two shells in, and shut it with a satisfying ‘ker-chack’. She thumbed the safety on.

“28 gauge? So this is, like, what? Twice as powerful as your 12 gauge?”

“Doesn’t work like that, kid. Caliber and millimeter, yes. The higher the number, the bigger the bullet. Shotguns are just the opposite. The lower the gauge, the bigger the barrel.”

“That’s dumb. What’s a 1 gauge then? A battleship cannon?”

“Damn near. I saw a 2 gauge on a TV show once. Damn thing fired enough birdshot to fill a coke can. Hunters used to use ‘em to take down entire flocks of ducks all at once.”

“Uh-huh. Neat…”

Ellie was trying to listen, but the feel of the beautiful blue-steel baby in her hands blocked out all other thoughts. She silently read the words engraved on the side of the frame.

_American Arms. 28 Gauge – O/U. Made In Italy. ‘Wings Over Winnipeg Competitive Skeet Shooting Tournament. Sep. 2013. Ladies Division. Second Place.’_

A deep breath escaped Ellie’s nostrils. Her face was a mix of many emotions.

_Maybe you deserve it, but I can’t stay mad at you, Joel._

“I believe you,” she said, looking up at him. She had said the words and she was going to make herself believe them. She had to. “About Kristi, I mean.”

“You wanna go have a look at her? I’ll show you the bite. It’s tiny. Just a nip.”

“No. This team is built on trust. You said it. I believe you.” She smiled. All was forgiven. Most of it, anyway. She would keep working on the rest. “Now… can you fix this sling? I need to be able to fire this bad girl from the hip.”

 

* * *

 

The bike had seen its fair share of repairs. There’s no way it couldn’t have, given that it was still running two decades after the last new one had rolled off the line.

“Aftermarket forks, mismatched wheels… See? That one’s red, but the back one is black, off another bike of the same model, seems like... Shock mounts look jerry-rigged, but damn solid work... Wire bundles are a real mismatched set, but they’ll do... This is definitely not the original manifold… Hell, most of the exhaust system’s been replaced. Original probably rusted out... These are really good welds here…” He marveled at the condition of the thing.

Ellie nodded sagely as he spoke, not understanding a word of it.

“That lady sure knew how to take care of a motorcycle,” he said to Ellie, his eyes still drinking in the machine.

“She _was_ a scientist,” Ellie remarked, watching him study the bike. She enjoyed the intensity he showed. She had never seen him enjoying something this much before.

That brought his head around. “No shit? How do you know that?”

“Told you. I searched her. Found her ID card and stuff. Her name was Kristi,” Ellie began, feeling a sudden, almost overwhelming obligation to tell this woman’s story to someone. “She… uhh…Um...”

“What is it, Ellie?”

_I can’t just leave her lying on that floor, in the dark, without saying something. _

The words began to come more easily than she would have guessed. She spoke somberly, in long unbroken chain, but not rushed. The words were solemn, slow, as they should be.

“Her name was Christine Chau, but she preferred to be called Kristi. She worked for some place called ConAgra. She was a researcher there. She and her husband Terry were celebrating their fifth anniversary. They were very happy, very much in love. They bought matching red motorcycles and decided to tour the country together. I think the pandemic hit while they were on vacation. I don’t think she ever made it home. She kept the keys to her house. Maybe she hoped to find her way back there one day. Or maybe she needed a reminder of who she had been before. She lost Terry somewhere along the way. She lost her bike too. Kept his. She cut her beautiful, long hair short. Easier to deal with, day to day, I guess. Twenty years, she was on that road. Until she stopped at a Shell Station one summer morning, looking for supplies. She didn’t find anything. But clickers found her. Hunters found her first. She shot it out with them from inside the store, fought them with a shotgun she won in a tournament somewhere in a place called Winnipeg. She took second place that day. She ran low on ammo, dropping her last two shells during the fight. There were more shells wrapped up in a handkerchief, back with the bike, but she couldn’t get to them, or to the bike. Clickers were drawn to the gunfight. Any hunters still left outside ran. The clickers closed in and she had no way to fight them. She couldn’t get back on her beloved bike, she couldn’t get back on the road. She was probably so tired of the road by that point, maybe she didn’t try very hard. I don’t know. She hid in the ladies bathroom, with an empty gun and a bite on her hand, a small one. But a small bite is all it takes. She waited in the darkness, with no one to talk to, no one to hold her, no way to end it for herself. She probably thought of Terry for as long as she could, hoping to be reunited with him at last. Then the door opened and she found herself standing in the light just as she was about to slip away. A man from Texas had found her. They were both a long way from home. All she wanted was to be with Terry again. Maybe she finally can be now. Maybe…She won’t be alone any more… I don’t know…”

Joel was very quiet for a second. Ellie began to feel the tears well up. She tried to blink them back. Her voice had faltered and failed at the end.

“Goddamn, Ellie… _How_ …?” Joel’s voice was huskier than usual.

She locked her shimmering green eyes on him, her mind made up. Her voice cracked as she spoke, but she pushed the words out before the tears could come back.

“She would have wanted us to have her bike, Joel. She didn’t spend all that time, all those _years_ keeping it running, just to let it rust away behind this store. She would have wanted us to take it.”

“I think you’re right, kid,” he said sincerely, and dug the keys out of his pocket.

_I’ll tell your story to him one day too, Riley. I swear I will._

Joel slipped the key into the ignition and turned it to the first position. The bike’s instrumentation panel lit up. The battery was still good.

“Scientist, huh?” From his tone, it was clear he was trying to distract her. She had a way of picking up on things like that.

“That’s what the card said,” Ellie responded, feeling the strange wave of melancholy that had passed over her earlier begin to recede, ebbing away, leaving bright daylight in its place.

“Well, the battery works. More than enough juice to start this thing up.”

Joel removed the key the bike without starting it. He pondered the fob dangling from the ring, looked at the photo of the happy couple from days gone by. For a moment, he thought about removing it, discarding it. He had never been much for trinkets and such.

But Ellie wouldn’t like it if I did, he thought. She’d think I was throwing a part of that woman away. Don’t know why it means so much to her, but it does. And it’s a small thing to do for her that’ll mean a lot.

He stuffed the keys back in his pocket, the fob still attached.

“Okay, kid. Let’s get our stuff together and get ready to go.”

The girl walked over, her shotgun slung from her shoulder with a crude loop of blue nylon rope Joel had found in one of the bike’s cargo boxes. She studied the controls of the bike. There were button everywhere: On each handle, the center console, the panels on either side of the fiberglass fairing, the front of the gas tank. She boggled at the complexity of it. Just on the front of the fuel tank alone, there were a dozen buttons and two knobs. She ran her hands around them, careful not to touch any of them directly.

“Jeez, it looks like a fucking spaceship or something.” The somber speaker from before was gone; the normal wide-eyed teenager was back. “Do you even know what most of these buttons do?”

“Most of ‘em, yeah,” he nodded. “Some of ‘em, like the GPS screen here, ain’t much use anymore. And the radio won’t do us much good either, since there aren’t any stations to listen to unless you’re near a quarantine zone. And who wants to hear that propaganda shit?”

“Not me,” she chuckled.

“But the rest of these buttons? Yeah, I know what they do.”

“Cool. You gotta teach me. Please?”

“Kid, your little feet won’t even reach the ground when you’re up on this thing. And it weighs damn near half a ton. I don’t think you’ll be doing much steering.”

“You can drive it. I just wanna sit up front and push the buttons,” she enthused. “Wait… _Half a ton_? Really?”

“Sure. These Gold Wings are tourin’ bikes. They’re built solid and have every damn luxury there is packed into ‘em, everything except a mini-bar. That makes for a lot of weight. A big 1800cc like this? Gotta weigh 800 pounds, easy.”

"Mini-bar?”

“Little fridge for drinks and stuff. Hotels had ‘em in their rooms, back in the day.”

“Neat. This bike is really pretty. I like the color.”

“Yep. It’s got it all. The back seat up there even has little fold-down armrests for you.”

“Sweet. So, is this Harley fancier that the ones you and Tommy rented back in the day?”

“This ain’t a Harley-Davidson, squirt,” he chuckled, the unexpected use of a nickname bringing a smile to her lips. “This is a Honda. A Gold Wing GL 1800. Made back in 2011 or 2012, I think.”

“I thought the outbreak hit in 2013.”

“It did. In September.”

“I guess Kristi and Terry didn’t buy their bikes brand new.” This was an important detail to her.

The things this kid thinks about, Joel thought to himself. What it must be like inside her head. No wonder she talks all the damn time. Her head would fill up and pop like a tick if she didn’t let some of that stuff churning around in there out every now and then.

“Probably not. As I recall, these things cost more than 20,000 dollars apiece, new. Buying two like that? Hell, that’s a pretty good down payment on a house, right there. Makes sense to buy ‘em a year or two old, save a little money.”

“20,000 dollars. That’s a lot, right? Like _a lot_ , a lot?” Ellie ran her hand along the gas tank, studying the detail of the bird’s wing logo emblazoned on the side. ‘Honda’ it read below in bold, exciting letters.

“More than I could’ve ever afforded to spend on a bike. Hell, it’s more than I spent on my work truck.”

“What kind of work did you do?”

Joel ignored her questions, as he sometimes did. Especially when she was delving into his past. “Here, you’re gonna want to put this on.”

He held out the black denim jacket. Kristi’s jacket. The denim was a bit faded and worn in places, and the black leather cuffs and panel running across the shoulders had cracked a bit from the many years of the sun beating down them. Ellie slipped into it easily.

“It’s kinda hot for a jacket, doncha think?” she asked, pushing the sleeves up just a tiny bit. Otherwise, it was an almost perfect fit for her.

“You won’t say that once we’re flying down the highway. Speaking of that…”

Joel took the red helmet from its resting place on the ground. He handed it her. She took it with wide eyes.

“So fucking cool.”

“Put it on, squirt. See if it fits.” She did. It wasn’t a bad fit, all things considered. Kristi’s head had been a little rounder, lending the helmet a bit of wigglyness that Joel wasn’t entirely happy with. Ellie, on the other hand, was positively delighted. She looked up at him excitedly, her eyes wide inside the helmet. The red shell and the black foam lining framed the green of her eyes as she burbled happily from beneath the layers of fiberglass, Kevlar and polypropylene. Her voice was quite muffled.

“Fucking A, Joel! This is awesome! I feel just like Dr. Daniela Star! See, in issue 1 of Savage Starlight, when she has to go outside her base on Ganymede, she wears a spacesuit with a helmet kinda of like this! Okay, here’s the deal: She’s trying to create something called a ‘Zero-Point Drive’ so we can leave the solar system. Something about relativity limits or something keeps us from going past the speed of light. And one of the tests they’re running damages the life support system for the station and so she has to suit up and go outside…”

Joel gently lowered the visor with his fingertip, sealing her inside, muffling her greatly, until he was at long last blessedly free to hear himself think. She trailed off into silence.

“Ahhhhhhh,” he sighed. “I have missed that sound.”

“Awwwwww,” she said, very faintly. “I was just getting to the good stuff, you ass.”

Joel placed his hand on her shoulder and walked her over to the big red bike. He took an old, scratched pair of polarized shooter’s glasses out of his backpack and slipped the amber lenses over his face.

“Have you had those the entire time? Do I get cool shades too?” Muffled. Easy to ignore now.

The large man reached down, flipped down the passenger’s foot pegs before climbing aboard the big bike himself. He took the weight off the kickstand, retracted it, balancing the bike, getting a feel for the machine.

How on earth had a woman that small managed a bike this damn big?

”Permission to come aboard, Cap’n.” She saluted crisply.

Joel reached down, taking her small hand in his, and helped her clamber up to the higher seat behind him. She no longer feared his hands. On a day like this, she was quick to let bygones be bygones. She settled in easily, her feet finding the pegs to be a not entirely uncomfortable distance away. She tugged her shotgun tightly across her chest, securing it by snugging the rope sling taut and looping it into itself. She found a handhold on his backpack strap and another in the leather belt he wore.

She flipped her visor up momentarily. “Ready for light speed, skipper.”

He chuckled, thumbed the ‘kill switch’ off and hit the electric starter. The old bike revved into life.

“This is gonna be so fucking sweet!” she announced, giddily, almost unable to sit still.

“Hell yeah, it is,” he agreed, smiling broadly. “Now you hold on tight. Lean the way I lean. Sit up straight and don’t squirm around back there.”

“I don’t squirm, Joel,” she said pointedly, flipping the visor down dramatically to emphasize her declaration of innocence.

“Yes, you do. You’re doing it right now.”

“That’s only because I’m excited!” her voice was muffled beneath the helmet. She bounced up and down slightly on the seat. “Now come on, you old fart! We’re burning gasoline!”

Joel squeezed the clutch and levered the bike down into first gear.

Been ages, he thought. Hope I still remember how to ride one of these things.

He eased them out of the parking lot, past the half open carwash. Inside, in the shadows, cordyceps stalks could be seen crawling up the walls, half-hidden by the spores floating around in the air in there. They glided smoothly up the onramp, back onto I-70. Shifting up to second, then third, he coaxed some speed from the big engine and began to put miles between themselves and the final resting place of Christine L. Chau, scientist, bike enthusiast, competitive shooter, and widow. Survivor above all.

The big engine rumbling smoothly, rolling them along the old highway, his eyes were fixed on the deteriorating surface of the interstate stretching out before them. He never noticed Ellie slowly raising her arms out to the side, hands flat and riding the air currents, like wings.

_I could fly. I could shut my eyes and we would lift off. I’d see all of Ohio passing by underneath us as we flew across it, high above, up there near the clouds, where nothing bad could reach us… And we’d be safe… Just me and him… flying all the way to Wyoming._

She closed her eyes, smiled, reached forward to hold on to Joel, her last and only friend, and let the wonder of flying on wings of gold take her to places she had never known before.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s two chapters behind me now. In a few days, I’ll post the next chunk of the story, in which Joel and Ellie cruise the open highways on their way to Wyoming. It will be a fairly short installment, but the one after that will be quite a bit longer. 
> 
> Tune in next time for Chapter Three: Crazy Eyes.


	3. Crazy Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie and Joel have their first encounter with another traveler on the endless asphalt trails of America’s old highway system.
> 
> Chapter three of Flying to Wyoming. New chapters every Wednesday and Saturday.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**  
 **Chapter 03 – Crazy Eyes**

 

This road wasn’t in the best of shape. These days, none of them were. Twenty years of hard winters and hot summers had turned the untended blacktop of Interstate 70 into an endless spider web of cracks. In the big truck they got from Bill, it had been pretty easy to ignore just how poor the road surface was. But on a motorcycle? No avoiding it.

They passed under a sign that indicated they were only a few miles from some place called Barnesville. Further on, more than thirty miles away, was Salt Fork State Park. He wondered if that would be a good place to camp for the night.

Joel suddenly found himself uncharacteristically wishing for the good old days, when he and Tommy had taken a pair of rented Harleys up out of Corpus Christi and rode them from the Gulf of Mexico all the way west to San Diego, California. He’d left Sarah with his mom for a little bit. She was so little, she didn’t really notice all that much. They’d hit the highway together, brothers and still best friends, celebrating Tommy’s birthday, seeing the country, and looking to raise a little hell along the way. The roads had been so smooth that in places, you could just lean back, rest your hands in your lap and let the bike sail along on a river of black asphalt. It was so well maintained, so glassy smooth; you could almost take a nap on the longer straight stretches.

All those tax dollars at work, he mused.

This shit was different. The broken, split blacktop required constant vigilance if you didn’t want to hit a gap so wide that it would surely wreck the bike. Some of the nastier splits were more than a foot wide. Too wide for a bike, even for one moving at the low cruising speed he was trying to keep her at.

Best we’re averaging is maybe thirty miles an hour, if that. Not as good as I’d hoped. But still doing better than we’d be doing on foot, he thought to himself, trying to focus on the blessing the bike had been. Thirty miles is what we’d be lucky to make in a day if we didn’t have this Honda. My old knees are just about worn out and her legs are too damn short for either of us to keep up the pace we need.

She sure tries hard, I’ll give her that much. Don’t complain much either. Not too much, anyway. Pretty unusual for a teenager. Hope all this weaving back and forth isn’t making her sick.

He looked back at her, reflected in the side mirror. Ellie was sitting up straight, holding on to him with one hand, keeping her shotgun with its sling of blue nylon rope pressed across her chest with the other, taking in the sights, feeling the wind rush past her. Having the time of her life.

At least she’s easily entertained, he thought and smiled briefly.

They rode past several buildings along the way: Gas stations, office buildings, a Best Western hotel. Even from the highway, they all looked picked clean. The cars in the parking lots had their doors, hoods, and trunks open. Old suitcases were scattered about, a few sun-bleached, tattered clothes blowing about in the wind. A few skeletons lying here and there. Most of the windows were broken. The work of scavengers, possibly, but more likely the areas within easy reach of Pittsburgh had been a regular source of supplies for the QZ’s military hunter-gatherer teams. Joel doubted there were two buttons to rub together any in any of those buildings. Picked clean years ago, most likely.

Up ahead, a good half-mile or more, he noticed a man walking along the right-hand side of the interstate, headed west, in the same direction as them. Dirty, ragged, wearing several bags, sacks, and pouches strapped across himself, he was wrapped in what looked like one of those old pea coats that his old buddy Rob had sported so proudly after he came home to visit his family after finishing Navy boot camp up by the Great Lakes.

He’s gonna hear us coming any second now, Joel thought.

He began to edge the big Gold Wing over to the left side of the road, trying to buy as much space as possible for the inevitable moment that was coming.

Don’t stop. If you stop moving, you’ll have to fight.

Ellie patted his shoulder urgently. Her forearm appeared in the corner of his vision, her hand pointing wildly at the man they were rapidly closing on. Joel nodded.

The sound of the Honda’s big 1832 cubic centimeter engine must have finally carried to his ears as the man spun around in surprise, as though he had been sure his mind was playing tricks on him before he turned to look. With fingers wrapped in tattered cloth work gloves, he pushed the filthy wool cap he had been wearing low over his forehead out of the way and stared at the onrushing duo with disbelieving eyes. Framed by his long, unkempt beard, his mouth dropped open in shock. The yellowed teeth within clamped together in rage and jealousy.

Sonofabitch’s got crazy eyes. I can’t see ‘em from here, but I know he does.

Less than a hundred yards between them now.

The drifter unlimbered an aluminum baseball bat from somewhere in his kit. It was covered in old crimson stains. He raised it, gripped tightly in both hands, ready to swing for the fences as they hurtled towards him.

Joel moved the bike all the way to the far shoulder of the road, to the very edge, an inch or two from the tall grass. The long green blades whipped at the toe of his boot. The road surface here was rough. A spill now would be bad. The man stepped out into the middle of the road, straddling the centerline, the bat over his shoulder. Crazy obscenities poured from his mouth loud enough to be heard even from this distance, over the sound of the wind, the engine. Joel needed a gun in his hand, but he didn’t dare take his hands off the bucking controls.

Forty yards now. Only seconds to go.

Make for the grass? Or run him down? Shit! Either way’s gonna lay us ove-

The balance of the bike shifted slightly. He fought to correct the wobble, realized the source, cursed loudly. Ellie was standing up on the pegs. With white knuckles, he worked hard to keep them from tipping over. Over his head, he saw the twin muzzles of her shotgun appear, her hand holding the weapon’s forestock in a death grip. She leaned forward, her weight pressing on his back to steady herself, her knees clenching his ribs. Her voice was clear, even with the wind and the rumble of the tires on the unfinished edge.

“OUTTA THE WAY YOU CRAZY FUCKER!!”

The drifter backpedaled quickly, the bat almost slipping from shocked fingers. He tripped over his worn-out shoes, barely held together with strips of duct tape. Something in one of his sacks burst as he toppled over, squirting some sort of fluid around him. He sprawled out, cursing at the apparition before him, certain it was a trick of his mind.

Joel maneuvered back onto the blacktop, opened the throttle up as much as he dared. They roared past the man in a blur of speed and sound. Fifty miles an hour now. Too fast and too dangerous to maintain for very long on a road like this, but he had to put distance between them and this guy. He might have a gun somewhere in one of those bags. He wondered if Ellie had ever gone this fast in her life.

”SEE YA! WOULDN’T WANNA BE YA!”

She whooped in her sprightly way, twisting around at the waist, trying to keep the gun on the man for as long as she could. He disappeared behind them quickly, receding into the black river of asphalt until he was lost to the background clutter of abandoned cars and peeling billboards. Soon, he felt Ellie gingerly settling herself down onto the seat again. After a mile, Joel dropped the speed to something more sensible.

She was shouting something in his ear. Between the whistling wind and the muffling effect of the helmet, most of it was swept away. Most, but not all.

“Somebody shoulda told him this was _our road_ , Joel!”

She slapped his shoulder, laughing joyously, and he turned his head momentarily to nod at her, proudly.

That nod told her everything she needed to hear at that moment.

Good girl.

Just behind her visor, he could see the edges of her cheeks come up in a mostly-hidden smile.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a pretty short chapter, I know. But I thought that adding extra words to it just to pad it out would diminish the impact of the neat little encounter with the crazy drifter. I think the economy of words worked in favor of the story, but your mileage may vary, of course. Anyhoo, the next installment is a bit more robust, clocking in at 3,000 words or thereabouts.
> 
> Check back in a few days for Chapter Four: ONG.


	4. ONG

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel and Ellie continue their journey through Ohio, along Interstate 70 and encounter the ghosts of the past.
> 
> Chapter four of Flying to Wyoming. New chapters every Wednesday and Saturday.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**  
**Chapter 04 – ONG**

 

The little boy saw them first. He pointed excitedly across the wide, grassy strip that divided the two stretches of blacktop at the red motorcycle coming down the other side of the interstate.

There were five of them that Joel and Ellie could see: Three adults, one smaller than the other two, probably a woman, and two children. The adults had rifles slung but didn’t unlimber them. The little boy raised his arm in a friendly, energetic wave. Ellie returned the gesture. The woman pushed the boy’s hand down. Joel was indifferent. Ellie kept her hand up, waving happily. The group watched them as they sped past, probably in mild bewilderment that there were any motorcycles still riding the American highways.

Ellie’s high voice carried across the grassy divide, bringing a warning to them at the top of her lungs.

"DON’T GO TO PITTSBURGH!! HUNTERS!!!”

Joel reached back and gave her left knee a pat.

Good girl.

We shoulda helped them. Sarah’s voice. The words carried back to him from a past that had stubbornly refused to stay buried these last few days.

Twenty years I’ve kept that shit stuffed down. Why the hell is it all coming up now?

He gave the bike a little more gas and put the people behind him as fast as he could.

 

* * *

 

Miles between them and the family now, and at least three or four bridges had passed under the rolling wheels of the Honda. They hadn’t seen another living soul since. Joel crested a hill and released the throttle, letting the Honda’s engine wind down to an idle. He heard Ellie gasp behind him.

“Whoa, Nelly. What the hell is THAT?!”

“Old battleground, kid.” The bike coasted to a stop, giving him time to survey the scene.

The highway before them was splitting and cratered, scattered from one edge to the other with a dozen or more old military vehicles, many of them burned down to skeletal frames. The wreckage went on for almost a mile. The forest that lined the highway on both sides still bore the scars of the old battle. Deep furrows in the earth, shattered telephone poles, splintered trees that had toppled over years ago. Many of the tree trunks were soft and rotten, barely holding their shape; others had already been reclaimed by the world, reduced to nothing more than scraggly strips of bark and piles of soggy, fibrous pulp. Where other trees had been uprooted by explosions and destroyed altogether, the grass had returned, but nothing else grew there. The few lonely stumps left here and there served as grave markers for the place where so many had died as the world they fought for so valiantly had perished with them.

“I never knew the army had fought the infected with tanks and stuff. Wow.” Her excited voice was muffled by the helmet but carried easily over the low idle of the motor. She flipped up her visor to take in the amazing sight.

“They didn’t,” Joel said. “Least, not this directly. Tanks weren’t much use against runners. That’s all we had in the beginnin’, runners. Clickers and shit didn’t show up till years later. We’re gonna have to take our time getting’ around this mess. There’s scrap metal and potholes every-damn-where. So you keep your eyes open back there, okay?”

“Sure thing, Joel.”

He drew his large Colt semiautomatic pistol and passed it off to his left hand, resting it on the top of handlebar, across the clutch lever. He flicked the safety off.

He looked back at her sternly. “I mean it, Ellie. It’s probably okay. Anything useful here woulda been stripped out by scavengers a long time ago. But there’s lots of hidin’ places up there for infected and crazies. Keep your damn eyes open, okay?”

“I said I will, Joel,” she insisted, half offended. “Jeez.”

“Alright then.” He downshifted to first gear and let out the clutch with the heel of his hand. He released a very tense breath at the same time. This could get bad quickly.

The bike rolled forward slowly. Moving at anything more than a crawl on blacktop as busted up as this, and he’d lay the bike over for sure. At eight hundred pounds or more, it’d be a bitch to get the Honda back up on two wheels. Some of the gaps in the split surface of the road were so wide, the bike only barely managed to cross them, even at the narrowest points. More than once, he wondered if he was going to be forced to climb off and walk the big heavy bitch around a few of the rougher, tighter spots.

“If they weren’t fighting the infected, then who the fuck were these guys shooting at?” she asked, maintaining a sober vigil from the vantage point her higher seat offered her.

“Each other.”

He carefully threaded the bike between an obsolete, slab-sided armored personnel carrier and a sleeker, turreted infantry fighting vehicle. Both were heavily damaged, the first by a volley of anti-armor rounds, the other by a missile, maybe fired from a helicopter. The crack in the asphalt made by the impact of the rocket was so wide that the bike edged along it like it was part of some daredevil highwire act.

“Each other? What the fuck for?” her voice was low, almost reverent. They were passing through a gravesite, after all.

“Nobody knew what the hell was going on in those first few months. Not really. Lots of bad decisions were made. You sure you’re keeping watch back there?”

“You bet your ass I am,” she said nervously, her head on a swivel. “I don’t wanna get eaten any more than you do, buddy.”

“You holdin’ up okay?”

“Totally cool. This is not a spooky place filled with dead trucks and ghosts and shit. Nope. Not scary at all.”

“You believe in ghosts?” They gently slipped alongside a bullet ridden Ohio State Trooper police cruiser. There were several more just like it strewn on this side of the battleground, mixed in among the dedicated military vehicles.

“Not really. But all this creepy shit is making a very convincing argument for them.”

The tank they slowly rolled past had been hit from above, judging from the ragged hole where most of its turret had once been. Maybe from the same gunship that had destroyed the Bradley IFV they’d seen fifty feet back. The barrel of the main gun had fallen off to one side. One heavy track had been broken loose and now rested in a long, straight line behind the tank.

Must have lost the tread to a bazooka or something and been immobilized, he thought. Sitting ducks. Not that armor had much of a chance against gunships. Not if those shows he used to watch on the History Channel were accurate.

A high voice piped up over his shoulder again, still quieter than normal. “How bad do you have to fuck things up so that your own army starts shooting at _itself_? I know FEDRA sucks and stuff, but this shit… Fuck.”

“FEDRA wasn’t in charge of anything yet. Didn’t really even exist at the time. We had something called FEMA back then. They were just as incompetent, I guess. But not as powerful.” He inched the bike along a particularly wide crack in the pavement.

“No FEDRA? Seriously?” She had never known a world without them. They had provided her clothes, her bed, her food, the roof over her head. As much as she hated them, it was very hard to imagine that anyone could exist without FEDRA.

“Nope. The last act of the American government was to dissolve FEMA and create a whole new department to help manage the disaster, gave ‘em all sorts of emergency powers. That was FEDRA. And the first thing FEDRA did was to get rid of the rest of the government.”

She tried to picture the American government as best she could. She imagined hundreds of quarantine zones, thousands even, all spread out over a country that was so big she could only picture it as one of the maps she had seen in her old magazines. All those zones -- cities, she corrected herself -- all those people, voting for stuff... somehow... not needing ID cards, not being forced to submit to regular infection scans, not needing ration cards, not subject to martial law, just living their lives as they pleased, coming and going as they liked, happy and safe. She tried hard, but couldn't manage to do it. It was too damn big for her little noggin, she decided and gave up on it.

“ _All_ of it?”

“Yep. Everything that wasn’t FEDRA, anyway.”

“What a bunch of dicks.” She was looking at a battered Humvee, riddled with hundreds of bullet holes. Rust stains ran down from every hole, like old blood.

“Yeah. That was the beginnin’ of martial law. FEDRA arrested the president, most of the congress, tried them for incompetence and stuff like that. Had a bunch of Supreme Court judges lined up and shot on the grass in front of the Washington Monument.”

“And people just let them do it? Why didn’t anyone stop them?”

“FEDRA took over command of the army, kid. The main army, I mean.”

“There was more than one army?” She could see several old skeletons huddled together behind a truck. Probably wounded who had died waiting for someone to rescue them. Their uniforms were the merest tattered scraps, fluttering around half-gone bones.

“Sure. See the markings painted on that truck right there? On the door?”

She looked at the painting on the door. There was a faded red shield with a blue X running across it. Beneath it, inscribed within a yellow ribbon, were words she had never seen before.

“’Fides Et Audax’,” she read aloud, doing her best not to mangle the strange words. “What does that mean?”

“No idea. I don’t speak Latin. Read the words stenciled _below_ the picture, kid.”

“ONG 134th F.A. Regt.” She tried to say the words phonetically, not knowing that the abbreviations that the military loved so much often denied pronunciation.

“Ohio National Guard would be my bet.”

“Okay. What’s that?”

“And see that big tank up there, the one way on the other side of the highway, past those trucks? The one with its cannon pointed at us?”

“Yeah?”

“When we pass it, I’ll bet it has regular U.S. Army markings on it. It ain’t part of the Ohio guard. Not if it was shootin’ at these guys before it got hit too.”

“But weren’t they all Americans? Why were they shooting at each other?”

“If what happened here was anything like what happened down in Texas, then somebody at the top pulled a trigger they shouldn’t have, one they couldn’t _unpull_ once they did,” he said, making up a word while easing the bike carefully around and beneath an old Humvee that was tipped up sharply, half sunk into a blast crater. “Cordyceps was spreadin’ so fast, the infected were starting to bust out of the those first cities… Thousands of ‘em at a time… runnin’ in these giant packs… _Huge_ …”

Ellie thought she felt Joel shudder. She knew he was remembering something particularly bad. She tried to picture what he was describing. Couldn’t. Not at that scale.

“FEDRA began to ‘aggressively contain’ the situation, as the man on the radio put it.” Around another truck, finding only barely enough room to squeeze between it and the twisted, blackened hulk behind it. More barely passable rifts in the blacktop lay beyond. “Told everyone not to panic. That everything would be back under control very soon… Man, we didn’t know shit about anything back then.”

Ellie squeezed his shoulder out of sympathy. If he noticed, he gave no sign.

“Some of the governors disagreed with the way Washington was handlin’ things. Didn’t like the idea of turnin’ guns on their own voters just because they’d been forced out of their homes and were tryin’ to get to someplace safe.”

“So anyone on the streets was a target?”

“Pretty much. Anyone who could hunkered down in their homes and waited. This was early on, before the government gave up hope of wipin’ out the runners and started puttin’ the quarantine zone plan together instead.”

“Is that what you did? Hide in your house?”

“I left my house the first night of the outbreak. Didn’t know not to.”

Ellie took a minute to process that. The horror implied by that statement sent a cold shiver through her. She squeezed his shoulder again.

“Joel…” she began, her heart going out to him.

“The army took to killin’ anyone they found on the highways. In some places, anyway. Didn’t matter if you were infected or not. Being outdoors was all the proof they needed that you had to be… ‘contained.’” The way he said the last word spoke volumes about a time so dark that Ellie could only guess at what he must be feeling.

They were almost through the wreckage. She looked to her left and saw that the tank he had pointed out earlier had no ‘ONG’ markings on it, just as he said it wouldn’t.

“Some of the governors managed to keep control over the National Guard units in their states… parts of ‘em, anyway. Started usin’ them to try and help the folks who were on the move. The Feds ordered the governors to ‘contain’ those people instead. Arguments broke out… Panic set in… Pretty soon… Well… You’re smart. You can guess the rest.”

“The armies started fighting _each other_." She said the words as if in a trance, not quite able to picture this in her mind either.

“That’s right. Packs of infected runnin’ around. People roamin’ the countryside, lookin’ for someplace safe, findin’ every door locked to them. Lootin’ breakin’ out everywhere. Neighbors shootin’ it out with each other across the sidewalks, in the aisles of Wal-Mart, on the playgrounds, killin’ each other over cans of Spam or a damned Kit-Kat bar. And then the goddamn bigwigs decide to have themselves a damn pissin’ contest about who was in charge of the whole shitty mess… For a few weeks there, they had themselves a nice little civil war goin’ on in a few spots… as though there weren’t enough godawful shit happenin’ already.”

“Jeez, Joel.”

“Yeah. Like I said, it was a real mess down in Texas. Heard it was other places too. Here’s the proof of that, I guess.”

“You ‘re from Texas?”

“Yep. I’m from Texas,” he said, easing them around the last blast crater, through the scattered rocks and rubble lying all around it, back onto smooth blacktop again – smooth relatively speaking, of course. “Back when there was still a Texas to be from.”

She was going to ask him more about this place, more about those first years after the outbreak, more about Texas, more about himself. But the road was clear again and he opened up the throttle, drowning her out. She dropped her visor down.

He was done talking. He wasn’t even sure why he had even told her all that stuff.

What the hell is it with this kid? How does she keep prying this old news out of me?

He wasn’t sure he even wanted to think about _why_ it was happening. Why he was _letting_ it happen.

The past stays buried, he thought. Simple as that. No baggage means you can move lighter. Faster. Nothing to slow you down. No more stories for her. Gottta keep this shit to myself. Won’t do me any good to keep digging this stuff up. It’ll only make me weak.

He felt her small hand on his shoulder again, squeezing, knew she was trying to reach out to him.

And I don’t need any sympathy from some wet-behind-the-ears little girl.

The engine roared as he leaned forward and opened the throttle even wider. It seemed he couldn’t put this place behind them fast enough. She wanted very much to hug him, but didn’t dare.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t see how something like what Joel describes could be avoided should something like the CBI pandemic actually sweep the world. I’m sure that even more horrors were visited upon the people of this world in those first days of the outbreak. Joel couldn’t have been the only person who found himself betrayed by those he thought would protect him. 
> 
> Unsaid in this story was that a large “hobo camp” of displaced, homeless people had sort of sprung up along this stretch of highway in the first weeks following the outbreaks in Cleveland and Columbus. There are no signs of the old settlement as it wasn’t permanent enough to leave any lasting proof of its existence twenty years on, so Joel couldn’t possibly have known exactly what brought these armies together. One was trying to defend the beleaguered people, the other had been sent in to kill them all and put down the rogue military unit.
> 
> The battle between the Ohio National Guard (134th Field Artillery Regiment) and their allies in the Ohio State Troopers against the larger, more well equipped forces of the United States Army, along with air support from the Air Force (former USAF veteran here! “Uno Ab Alto!” w00t!) was probably very brief, very one-sided, and very tragic, given what was going on in the world in those first few months following the outbreak. But I wanted to show that some would stand up for what was right, even as civilization collapsed all around them. Perhaps it was counterproductive. It was almost certainly futile. But it was the right thing to do. That’s my two cents anyway.
> 
> See you here again on Saturday for much lighter fare in Chapter Five: Shore Patrol.


	5. Shore Patrol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small, prosperous community lies hidden deep inside the forest of an Ohio state park. Joel and Ellie debate if they can safely approach these people, wonder if they have something they can offer in exchange for a secure place to bed down for the night.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**  
 **Chapter 05 – Shore Patrol**

 

The enormous lake reflected the light of the early evening sun beautifully. Ellie marveled at the size of it. A million sparkles danced across its rippling surface. She had never seen anything like it.

‘Salt Fork Lake’ the sign down by the main road had said.

_I wonder if the water is salty?_

“Man, Joel. Look at that view! It’s gorgeous… Picturesque,” she added, quite proud of herself. She was a reader; it was nothing to be ashamed of.

“See ‘em yet?” His voice was as dour as his mood. He was not in the mood to be dazzled with an impressive vocabulary or amazing view. He lay nearby, just a few feet away. He had passed the rifle to her a minute before. He indicated with his hand where he wanted her to look.

From her perch on a lightly forested hilltop, she panned the scoped rifle (a Winchester 70, as he had recently informed her) across the shoreline. Here and there, she saw people milling around the shore, tiny at this distance, even with the powerful scope. Men and a few women armed with rifles similar to hers, patrolling the tree line, the shore, the well-marked trails. One man on a blue four wheeler puttered along an asphalt path leading up from the marina to the main complex. A nasty looking military rifle was tied down with bungie cords to the cargo rack on the front of the little vehicle. A big dog loped along happily next to the blue ATV.

_Ooh! Doggy!_

“See ‘em?” he repeated.

The beautiful waters must have been warm, even late in the day, judging from how enthusiastically the half dozen or so children were splashing around, under the watchful eyes of several women in bathing suits, who waded amongst them protectively.

One of the darker women leading a little boy into the water for swimming lessons caught Ellie’s eye and made her mind wander places she wasn’t proud of for a brief moment.

_Look at the curves on her. And a white bathing suit too…My God…I wish you’d teach me to swim, lady. You are gorgeous._

She willed herself back to the hilltop where she lay, carefully positioned to ensure she wasn’t silhouetted against the sky shining through the trees behind her, just the way Joel had shown her when they crawled up here to have a look at scenic Salt Fork Lodge. She scanned more of the compound with the scope, a little ashamed at how her mind had wandered for a moment.

“Yeah. I see them. You were right. Lots of guards down there.”

The former resort lodge was surrounded by a beautiful, thick forest, and had an old, tall fence running around most of the perimeter, reinforced by all manner of boards, planks, dead cars, whatever could be scrounged up, probably, to shore it up and fill in the few gaps. Armed men guarded the main entrance that connected the resort with the winding blacktop river that twisted up the hill to the main road a few miles away. Several cars had been parked across the blacktop and along the surrounding grass in a crazy, zig-zag pattern to keep anyone from coming up the road too quickly. The other, smaller gates seem to have been sealed off with city dumpsters, buses and other large vehicles. Inside the walls, there were several buildings, a few of them quite large, many of them in use, from the looks of it. Along the shoreline, many cabins also seemed to be occupied. A few small boats were out on the enormous lake, each with a few men aboard casting lines, fishing.

_How many people are down there? Fifty? Sixty? More? They all look so…happy._

“They’ve got kids, Joel.”

_Henry had said that bad guys don’t travel with kids. I remember the notes left behind by Ish in his surprisingly homey sewer encampment. He was another good man who helped kids, gave them a chance to just be kids…for a while anyway. Bad guys and little kids don’t go together. So these people have to be cool, right?_

“Yeah. And at least a dozen people walking around with guns. More guns at the main gate too. And they got some sort of police armored truck too, parked around the side of the building that has the pool out back. See?” He crawled over to lie right beside her, his hand indicating the directions she should look, ready to impart more lessons. It made her feel like a real partner and not just a tagalong kid. She couldn’t help but smile.

“Maybe we can try to meet with them? See if they have some food? Maybe a place to let us sleep for a night or two?” she asked, ever the optimist.

“They probably aren’t too welcomin’ of strangers, Ellie. Nobody is these days.”

“But we’re not a threat to a group like that. Maybe if we go down there and act friendly...”

"They’re maybe a hundred miles from Pittsburgh,” He continued. “Pretty far these days, but still… I’m surprised they’ve lasted this long without being found… and wiped out. They’re either very lucky… or people around here know better than to mess with the folks on that lake.”

“Come on, Joel. They might be nice people. And I’m hungry. And that lake looks _amazing_.” Her mind drifted back to the possibility of swimming lessons.

“And if they’re not?” He asked the question in a way that meant he wanted an answer.

“Welllll…” she stretched out the word, stalling for time to think. “We won’t know if we don’t try… Right?”

His tone said that she had not given him the right answer. Not even close.

“Ellie, even if they didn’t just take our motorcycle the moment we pulled up, and all our gear, for that matter... Even if they did agree to let us in, assumin’ we had enough to barter with to buy a couple of beds for the night, which we probably don’t…”

”We could share one. I’m teeny,” she teased, hoping to get a smile out of him. As soon as the words left her mouth, it dawned on her how else Joel might interpret them. She was wincing even as he shot her a look of vexation.

“Sorry! Sorry! Didn’t mean it like that! You know what I meant.”

_Don’t say shit like that, Ellie. Stay on his good side, for fuck’s sake._

" _Even if_ we could buy our way in for a night,” he continued doggedly, “You really think they won’t check us out before they let us in. Make sure we’re don’t have the flu, or that we’re not covered in lice or sores… or that we’re not _infected_.”

Ellie heaved a great sigh, lowering her forehead to the grass. “Fuck. Of course.”

She remembered how Bill had handcuffed her to a pipe on the wall, forced Joel to kneel down while he checked him for bites. Her turn was next. Just thinking about it made her shift about anxiously in the grass, an echo of that desperate panic rushing back to her.

_Crazy motherfucking hermit psycho… If he had seen my arm… Seen the bite…If that pipe hadn’t been so loose…If he’d taken that fucking machete of his to my arm…_

Without meaning to, she rubbed at the bite mark hidden beneath the long sleeve of the white Tim Horton’s t-shirt she had found in one of the saddlebag compartments of the old Gold Wing. Whoever the Tim Horton was, the shirt assured her, he was ‘always fresh’.

“Okay. So what do we do?”

“Get back on the road. Look for someplace better to rest.”

She took another longing look at the fortified resort down there, her eye at the scope, seeking out the woman in the white one-piece bathing suit without consciously choosing to do so. She didn’t mean to stare. It just sorta happened… again.

“Hard to think of a place better than this,” she muttered softly. She wanted to stay. This looked like exactly the sort of place that she and Riley had imagined would be outside the city walls. She felt guilty for wanting to stay, but couldn’t help feeling this way.

_The whole world’s counting on me. Riley, Tess, Sam. Maybe Marlene too. Everyone who died, everyone who’s gonna die. They’re all depending on me. And all I want to do is swim around in those waters and spend the night with Joel in one of those cabins. Just watch the sun go down over those waters. Snuggle up next to him in a big warm bed, pull the covers up and feel his arm around me, laying there all safe and warm, like a family, I guess. Then wake up and see the blue sky over the bluer lake from my window. I want to be someplace safe and get off this damn road for a while. I just want to be normal. I just want to belong._

_But I know I can’t. I know I’m not normal. But I still want to be…_

_God, I’m such a selfish bitch. What the fuck’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just be happy to do the good that Marlene said I was destined to do? She said I’m going to save the whole world. For fuck’s sake, I’m going to save everyone. Isn’t that enough? Do I have to be so fucking stupid and selfish to want more than that? Fuck, I ought to be ashamed of myself. God, I’m such a dumb little cunt sometimes. I’m sorry, Marlene. I’m trying._

He was still speaking. “Any place that will have us is better than one that won’t.”

“I guess you’re right,” she said wistfully, the scope settling in place, her eye seeking out something comforting, something a shitty little selfish girl like her didn’t deserve. A flash of taut white fabric. A splash of twinkling water. Glistening brown skin. “But damn! This view is just… so gorgeous…”

“It sure is,” Joel agreed, having no idea what Ellie was looking at. “But we gotta go kid. Sun will be down soon. Gotta find a place to bed down somewhere and pretty quick.”

_Keep me moving, Joel. Don’t let me stop. I don’t want to do this some days and I’m so fucking ashamed of that. Keep me going, okay?_

“Sure thing, Joel. Let’s get moving.”

A moment later, they hustled down the hill, back to the red Honda, back to Lake Ridge Road, back to Interstate 70. Darkness was going to fall soon.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short little nugget of a story, I know, but I wanted to show that maybe (just maybe) there are a few good communities left in this world, that maybe all of the hopes for the future aren’t crowded into the one basket that is Jackson, Wyoming. Also, I wanted to really hammer home the point that Ellie and Joel don’t have a home anywhere except Jackson because of Ellie’s “condition.” It makes the world just a little bit bigger and lonelier for them, forces them to rely on each other just a little more as they work their way west. Plus it gave me a chance to touch on the survivor’s guilt (with just a hint of self-loathing) that Ellie suffers from. The deep guilt and sadness hiding beneath the tough but goofy surface is one of the things that make Ellie so interesting to me.
> 
> Also, this point in the story marks the first “deleted scene” edited out of “Flying To Wyoming.” For various reasons, I trimmed three chapters out of the final version of the story. They all exist on my hard drive in various states of completion (either first or second drafts) and I plan to put them out as “one shots” at some points. So I pose this question to you fine folks: Do you want me to release them at the end, after all twenty chapters are up? Or do you want me to release them when I come to the point in the story where they would have originally appeared? 
> 
> Leave me a note in the comments and let me know which one that you’d prefer.
> 
> Drop by next time when Joel and Ellie finally find a safe place to rest for a few days and ‘Flying To Wyoming’ gets splashed with a nice lemon scent in Chapter Six: Vacancy. (Joellie alert! Ellie will start to develop her crush on her big, gruff protector at last)


	6. Vacancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After maintaining a breakneck pace since leaving Boston almost two weeks ago, Joel and Ellie are exhausted and need to find a safe place to rest up for a few days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, amorous feelings begin to bloom and this fic earns its “lemon” tag.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 06 – Vacancy**

 

Ellie crouched low against the edge of the outside wall of the motel’s top floor exterior walkway. From her vantage point on the second story, she could see the entire parking lot. The big Honda was tucked in between two large trucks, safely hidden from view. A pair of infected roamed the parking lot, a runner and a stalker, drawn to the sound of the old soda bottle she had chucked down there moments before. With any luck, neither one of them would look up here until Joel had finished strangling the runner who had been lurking in room 203. She watched as he pulled the dreadful thing down, his arms locked around its neck from behind, slowly going to one knee, bending it over backwards, almost breaking its back as he choked the life out of it.

With a grisly death rattle, the thing shuddered to the end of its abominable existence. Whoever this woman had been before, the mockery that the fungal parasite had made of her wouldn’t threaten anyone ever again. Joel lowered it the rest of the way to the ground gently. She knew that he was doing it to minimize the noise, but she pretended that it was out of respect for the long-gone woman’s life and the choices stolen away from her by the disease. Her dingy red and white blouse was a uniform from some place called Denny’s. The stitching over her left breast pocket read ‘Sheila.’

_Sorry, Sheila. I wish this hadn’t happened to you._

The thing that had been Sheila had a large set of keys in her pocket. Joel fished them out, studied them for a moment, and dropped them into his own pocket. Joel looked over to Ellie, indicated the infected still milling about in the parking lot below. He placed his finger over his lips to remind her that they must be quiet. Across the street from the motel was something called an ‘IHOP’, which sounded like a fun place to visit (probably lots of dancing around, or something) and adjoining the motel’s parking lot was a Bank Of America. She knew that banks were places that kept money for robbers to steal. She had seen movies about it. She knew also that any one of these nearby building could hide more infected. The evening was getting late. Maybe an hour and a half before the sun went down. They had to secure a safe place to bed down for the night. He beckoned her over to him.

She crept across the concrete walkway, staying low, dividing her gaze between the man waiting at the top of the stairs, ready to descend, and the last two infected roaming the parking lot of the Motel 6, just off Interstate 70, outside of Zanesville, Ohio.

_Must be nice to have so many motels that you don’t even bother to name them all. Just slap a number on them as you build them. Motel 5, Motel 6, Motel 31…How lazy do you have to be?_

_Hell, when Riley plopped down a new hotel on the Monopoly board, she always thought up a name for it, just to torment me when my little doggy landed on the square. And she always used her obnoxious ‘fancy lady’ voice._

_‘Welcome, Miss Williams. Let me get your bags. You’ll be staying the night at the fabulous Chez Riley, the fanciest place on Park Place! We have all the finest luxuries! But it isn’t cheap, Miss Williams! But of course, nothing this close to GO is. But I assure you, young lady, you’ll find it even more relaxing than your recent stay at the fine Abel Arms, just down the street, on the other side of the railroad tracks. Needless to say, we are much more expensive than your last lodgings, but you knew that already. Otherwise you wouldn’t have rolled a three in such a ritzy part of town. And don’t worry, we here at Chez Riley are happy to look the other way for a woman who’s spent so much time in jail recently. So long as you’re able to pay the bill, of course, darling.’_

_And then she’d take the last of my play money and I’d throw the board up in the air, and she’d laugh and put me in an arm lock until I begged her to let me out of debtor’s prison. Then she’d make me pick up all the game pieces and ask me why I sucked so much. And then we’d laugh…_

_And that bitch never once let me be the racecar. Not once! No, only Riley was cool enough to be the racecar. I usually got to be the little doggy, but if she really wanted to torment me, she’d make me be the wheelbarrow._

_The fucking wheelbarrow! _

_God, I miss her._

Joel whispered in her ear, snapping her back to the present. “Okay, kid. The second floor is clear too. All we gotta do now is get those two down there and this place will be as secure as we can make it. Then we can find a room to hole up in for the night. The janitor’s keys I just found should get us into any room we need. You ready to help me take out those two down there?”

“Sure. But where the fuck did they even come from?” she hissed. “We swept the parking lot, both floors, the dumpster around back, checked all the cars. How the fuck did they get behind us?”

“Came from inside that big U-Haul truck, over there by the BoA,” he gestured at the Bank of America next door, saving her from having to ask what the hell a ‘BoA’ was. “I think they heard that cinderblock you dropped on that one’s head.”

He indicated a dead clicker lying below in the parking lot, directly beneath room 202, his fungus encrusted skull splattered into a dozen chunky pieces, a large, cracked cinderblock resting alongside the ruin of his face. The spray pattern on the asphalt was gorily glorious to her eyes. She found herself alternately fascinated and sickened by the pattern she had made.

“You said no guns,” she whispered, defending herself. “A cinderblock is not a gun.”

“I also said we had to be quiet, Ellie,” his voice was strained, harsh.

“Cinder blocks are quiet,” she insisted, remembering full well how loud that thing had been when she dropped it from the walkway overhead and crushed the thing’s head with it.

_Quiet-ish._

“Quieter than a gun, anyway,” she insisted.

“Zip it!” he said, as softly as he could while still making his point. His tone was soft, but there was no mistaking his simmering anger. “We are going down there, we are going to kill those last two infected, and we are going to do it _quietly_. Understand?”

“Keep your voice down,” she teased, her grin turning to a wince when his brow furrowed and his mouth became a hard line. “Sorry. Not the time for a joke, huh?”

_Jesus, he’s kind of pissed. Probably shouldn’t rag him like this. He looks pretty beat._

“Whenever you’re ready, boss.” She nodded to him, showing him that she was taking this seriously, her voice even lower than before. “Quick and quiet. Just like you said.”

Her small switchblade opened with a soft metal snap. He nodded once, a fire axe in his hands. She followed him as quietly as she could down the stairs to the parking lot, taking up a hiding spot behind a rusty old car, waiting for his cue to strike.

_One more time, and then we can get some rest. Almost done…_

 

* * *

 

Joel let her pick the room. It was the first big decision he had let her make since they had started this journey together. She had tried to do her best. She wanted to impress him.

“Good view of the parking lot, the bike, both windows still intact, door lock still works. Pretty clean in here too,” she said, trying her hardest to sell him on the choice she had made. The keys still jingled in her hand. “What do you think?”

“Yeah. This’ll do. Good job.”

“Thank you.” She was very pleased with herself. Pleased that she had pleased him. She handed him the keys.

Joel tossed the jingling ring onto the dresser at the far end of the room, next to the bathroom door.

The soft sunset glow filled the small room. There were two beds inside – the main reason she had chosen this room over the almost pristine one on the other corner. One of the two beds had been slept in an uncertain amount of time ago. The other was still made neatly.

“That one’s yours,” Joel said, indicating the one with the nice, crisp covers.

“Hey, thanks,” Ellie said, dropping her backpack at the foot of the bed. The firm mattress felt so good to her as she plopped down on it with a weary sigh. She lay back, throwing her arms open dramatically as she hit the mattress. “Ahhhhhhh!”

Joel said nothing despite the fact that she had dialed herself up to maximum cuteness. She lifted her neck, pressing her chin against her chest, looking down the length of her supine body at him.

“Why are you being so generous with me today?” The strain of keeping her neck in place made her voice sound a little odd. “Not that I’m complaining. Just curious when you’re gonna spring your trap.”

He continued to walk the room, exploring corners, looking under things, inside drawers. “You know what they say about gift horses, kiddo.”

“Actually, I don’t. What do they say?” Her head dropped back down to the wonderful bed.

“Don’t look ‘em in the mouth.”

“Umm… Okay then?” The confusion was easily heard in her voice. There were no answers to be found on the ceiling of the room. She thought about closing her eyes. Maybe the answers were on the inside of her eyelids. Only one way to find out.

“Means it’s bad manners. Don’t be ungrateful when somebody gives you a gift.”

“I wasn’t! I mean…” she sat up, rubbed her forehead in frustration. “I’m not, Joel. I… Forget I said anything.”

_Fuck, he’s so damn touchy today._

His head was in the bathroom door, his spare hand leaning heavily on the wooden trim of the doorframe, his fingers filled with his revolver. With his other hand, he used his flashlight to check out the tiny area. His voice echoed slightly from inside as he spoke.

“I figured you earned it, is all.” He stepped back from the bathroom door, facing her. “For that business with the stalker. Probably saved my bacon, kid. So you get the nice bed.”

“Aww. Thanks, Joel. I was just doing my part,” she grinned appreciatively, winding her fingers together in her lap and kicking her feet happily. “But it’s nice to be recognized for my many fine contributions to the team.”

”’Many fine –‘,” he repeated. “Damn, you sure are a reader, aren’t you?”

“Gotta grow my mind, Joel,” she said, beaming at what she hoped had been a compliment. “The rest of me doesn’t seem to be growing anymore.”

From her seated position on the edge of the bed, she held her legs out in front of her for emphasis. “Five foot three since last Christmas and holding. My pro basketball dreams are over, I’m afraid.”

“You’re a mess, kid.” He grinned when he said it.

“Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

The stalker was on the far side of the parking lot, looking for them in that creepy, crafty way stalkers had. It crouched low, clicking, looking, listening. The fungus was just starting to overtake its face, emerging from the left eye socket and spreading along the cheekbone, marking the progress of an infected body’s slow, inevitable evolution from runner to clicker.

For some reason she didn’t understand, this transitional stage seemed to be the most cunning one. Still retaining some sight, just beginning to use the echolocation it would soon have to rely upon entirely once the fungus expansion had destroyed both eye sockets. Stalkers possessed the best attributes of both stages. But more than that, they seemed to be cleverer than either.

_God, I hate those things. They’re too smart. Like the person inside isn’t around to fight for themselves anymore. Like the cordyceps has free run of the body. How the fuck can a mushroom be so smart?_

The female runner had become separated from the old male stalker. She jerked and twitched her way around the parking lot, seemingly at random. Ellie tried her hardest not to think about the possibility of the woman still being trapped inside that shell, still trying to fight the invading infection, trying to win a war she had already lost. Her thoughts went briefly to Sam, wondered if he had experienced something similar, in those last moments when the cordyceps told him to attack her on the floor of the room at the base of the radio tower. His last moments on earth before Henry, his own brother, killed him.

_He saved me. But he couldn’t forgive himself. Now they’re both gone._

From his place behind an old black Jeep Cherokee, Joel hissed at her, getting her attention. He motioned that he was going sneak up behind the runner as it passed the far side of the Jeep. He wanted her to stay low.

She nodded, holding her switchblade tightly. She would have preferred to do this with guns, physical power not being her strongest asset (no pun intended). But who could say how many infected might be nearby. The day was winding down and they needed sleep, he moreso than her. They couldn’t risk being forced to bug out and hit the road at dusk. Looking for a campsite at night was simply too dangerous.

The runner trembled and shuddered her way past Joel’s hiding spot on the other side of the Jeep. Joel gripped his fire axe and waited for the perfect moment. From across the row of cars, behind the rusty Toyota, Ellie tensed, knife in hand, ready to support him.

Neither of them noticed that the stalker at the far end of the parking lot had disappeared.

 

* * *

 

The room had been occupied by a woman, probably within the last few months. Her purse and several pieces of luggage were still here. A note had been on the little table with the telephone, positioned between the two beds. The paper had been held in place by several small glass bottles of something Ellie hoped was tasty. Joel was skimming the letter. Ellie busied herself by getting the room ready for camping. There would be plenty of time later to dig through the baggage for goodies. Right now, more than anything else, she wanted to get cleaned up and go to bed. It would be dark soon.

He had laid a pistol on the small table that separated the beds. She had done so as well. He propped his shotgun against the wall near the bed, within easy reach. She placed her in a similar fashion. His flashlight rested next to his pistol. Hers did the same.

_What he does, you do._

She placed her switchblade under the pillow. With her backpack on the mattress beside her, she sat down and began to break out the few things she had to contribute to tonight’s dinner. Indoors as they were, she knew there would be no campfire. That meant cold food from cans. And some food just wasn’t any good cold. This limited her options severely.

Hidden in the depths of her backpack, she studied the heavy can of crushed pineapple she had stolen from Frank’s house, back in Lincoln, as she passed through the kitchen, on her way to discovering the pickup truck. She absolutely loved pineapple and was saving this for a special occasion.

_Is tonight the night? Hmmm._

After a long moment of very serious deliberation, she decided to save it for another day. Maybe the day they found the Fireflies.

“Sliced peaches or mixed fruit?” she chirped, holding up one can of each.

Ellie was delighted at the prospect of a meal. The excitement from fight in the parking lot was beginning to fade, and her hunger was returning with a vengeance.

“Peaches,” he mumbled, distracted by the letter in his hand.

“Ugh. You _always_ choose peaches,” she chided, with an exasperated sigh.

“I like peaches,” he said wearily, losing interest in the note. “But fuck it, Princess. Whatever you want, okay? That’ll suit me just fine.”

She looked up from the cans in her hands, stung at his words. She felt a little ember of anger growing inside her. “Will you stop snapping at me? I was just trying to have a conversation with you, okay?”

He studied her for a moment, opened his mouth, found he didn’t have the words yet. He let out a long breath instead.

“I’m just cranky is all, kid. Don’t pay me no mind. Haven’t got much rest these last few nights. Catchin’ up to me is all.”

_Not exactly an ‘I’m sorry’. But Joel doesn’t do those, I guess. It’ll have to do._

She studied him. What he said was true. Joel had not slept more than a few hours at a time since they had left Pittsburgh a week ago. His shoulders were slumped. His footsteps were heavy. It showed on his face most of all. The lines there were even deeper than usual.

When the plan to camp at Salt Fork Lake hadn’t panned out, they’d been forced to keep going, eventually arriving at the small airfield of the Zanesville Municipal Airport. It was well after dark when they’d arrived. They’d had to kill several infected to secure a small space to sleep inside a dusty old tool room. There was little rest to be had for Ellie there, and almost none whatsoever for Joel.

_That was a long fucking night. Didn’t even get a chance to climb around inside either of those little airplanes. ‘Puddle Jumpers’, I think he called them. I’d really wanted to, but as soon as the light came up, we could see how bad the place really was. Infected milling around inside the fence, inside the hangars. I don’t know how they didn’t stumble across us back there, hiding in that little room. On the ride out, we must have had a dozen of the fuckers running after us. I bet they chased the bike for half a mile._

_God, he looks so tired._

She gently lobbed the can of peaches at him. “Here. Peace offering, okay?”

“Sure. Thanks.” He sat the can next to a large tin of corned beef hash. He didn’t smile. Neither had she.

_Still grouchy. On the bright side: not a bad meal tonight. I like everything on the menu._

Joel bent knelt down to take off his boots. He thought better of it and sat back heavily against the wall instead, only one set of laces undone. He closed his eyes and groaned.

_He hasn’t had a good night’s sleep since the night the four of us camped at the radio tower. He and Henry talked about Harleys… and I told Sam all the wrong things._

“Pretty tired, huh?” she asked, trying to pack just the right amount of empathy in her words.

“Pretty tired, yeah.”

 

* * *

 

His boot had slipped on the asphalt as he darted up, moving from behind the Jeep, axe poised to strike. The scraping noise was all it took to alert the runner. It whirled around, hissed, rushed Joel with mouth agape and arms thrashing wildly.

Joel tried to sidestep the thing, but he stumbled. His boots seemed to be heavier than usual. He recovered, barely, and deflected the grasping hands by the barest of margins. The fire axe had clattered loudly to the ground, both his hands busy trying to hold the thing’s clutching talons back. He was slightly off balance, going over at any moment.

Suddenly, Ellie was on the thing, her legs trying to wrap themselves around the runner’s waist, her left arm secure across its shoulders, clutching at the monster’s tattered, raggedy coat with little fingers, her trusty knife flashing in the light of the late evening sun. She struck at its neck with quick jabs.

“Joel! Stalker! Behind!” she grunted, trying to keep her voice down, straining with the effort of killing the runner one small wound at a time.

Eyes wide, teeth gritted, Joel scooped up the fire axe, swiveling in place on one foot, raising it just in time to make a wild swing at the stalker that had circled around behind the Jeep began to lunge for him. The monster slammed into him, the momentum of the attack carrying them both to the pavement.

 

* * *

 

Ellie was tugging at his last boot. It stubbornly refused to part with his foot.

“You don’t have to do this, kid,” he mumbled pleasantly, never opening his eyes. “I can take off my own boots.”

But he made no effort to do so.

“You’ve been sitting there on the floor, working up the energy to take off your boots for five fucking minutes, Joel. I want to get to dinner before I starve to death. Now come on, tell your foot to meet me halfway here.”

“Alright. I’ll see if I put in a good word for you with him. But when he’s this tired, Lefty don’t listen to a damn thing I say.”

She giggled, a genuine girlish sound. She had never laughed so adorably in front of him before.

_Joel can be a real asshole when he was tired. But he’s pretty funny too. I like Tired Joel._

The boot came loose at last. She placed it next to his other one by the door. Her small canvas high top sneakers looked almost like doll’s shoes next to his big, scuffed work boots.

“Ever stay at a place like this?”

“A Motel 6? Hell yeah. This kind of place was much more my speed than those fancy digs we saw back in Pittsburgh.”

“Better than the Zanesville Municipal Airport, right?” she asked, trying her best to make light of a lousy memory.

“Kid, the inside of a tipped over Port-A-Shitter would be a nicer place to rest than that place was.”

She remembered huddling against him in the darkness, tucked under his arm, trying to catch miserable crumbs of sleep, while he sat alert, listening, pistol in hand.

“You’re not wrong about that, old man.”

 

* * *

 

Stab! Stab! Stab!

_Just! Fucking! Die!_

The runner was bleeding out, writhing in its death throes, trying to throw the girl off. She hung on for dear life, legs swinging wildly, knowing that to be anywhere but directly behind the thing was a death sentence so long as it still lived. She tried to work her knife in deeply, but she was being tossed around too much. All she could manage were shallow cuts.

_Keep it up! This fucking thing can’t keep bucking me around like this forever. These cuts have got to wear it down sooner or later! It needs that blood that’s squirting out! Sooner or later…_

Joel was not faring as well.

Caught in a sneak attack by the onrushing stalker, he had been bowled over, tumbling to the blacktop of the parking lot. He had managed to get in one underpowered attack with the fire axe as the monster struck, but his swing had little strength behind it and was badly aimed, striking the monster in the upper chest, cleaving the collarbone in half. One fungus-crusted arm immediately fell limp, the damage to the nerves and connective tissue to great for even cordyceps to route around. But the other mottled hand grabbed him by the shirt, tearing it into long ribbons as it tried to pull it closer to him in a deadly embrace. The reverse point of the axe blade, still stuck in the creature’s torso, was dangerously close to Joel’s eyes and getting closer as he struggled with the thing on top of him, locked in hand to hand combat.

The handle of the axe was pressed against his ribs, digging into his stomach, painfully working against him as he braced his boots against the pavement and levered the monster over, agonizingly slowly, inch by inch, using the weakness of the thing’s limp arm to his advantage. Seconds dragged by like hours as he tried to roll it off of him.

Mostly on their sides now, tangled together, one hand on the stalker’s neck, the other holding the claw that still clutched the tatters of his plaid shirt, Joel grunted with the exertion of holding it in place, hoping that the thing would run out of air soon.

It began to kick at him, trying to break his boots contact with the pavement, wanting to break his leverage, hoping to regain the advantage it had enjoyed just moments before.

Cordyceps imbued its host with phenomenal strength and endurance. Even someone as powerful as Joel couldn’t outmuscle an infected person if they were sufficiently consumed by the terrible parasite. He could feel his reserves of adrenaline beginning to ebb. His muscles burned and his lungs were drawing air in with ragged gasps. This stalemate was only going to end one way for him.

 

* * *

 

There were two clear plastic jugs sitting on top the dresser by the bathroom door, one full of water, the other just more than half so. A note was tucked under the edge of the partially filled jug. Ellie took it, read it; Joel sidled up next to her, and she passed him the note to read. He skimmed it.

     Tala,

     Dropped by. You weren’t here. Russ scrounged up some more water.  
     There’s a big truck full of it a few miles from here. Be sure to thank  
     him later. Those crates can’t be easy to carry that far.

     Drop by my room when you get back from where ever you went. We  
     can talk. I’m sure you and he can still make this work. She won’t last  
     very long here. I can already see that for a fact.

     Don’t give up hope,  
     Sheila

A gallon and three quarters. Joel worked the math on it. There was enough here to fill their canteens, with plenty left over to wash up with before bed. Not enough to wash their clothes, but at least they could get the stink of the road off their skin for a little while.

“Good news, kid. That bath you’ve been pissin’ and moanin’ about? Looks like you’re finally getting’ your chance.”

“Finally! I’m so fuckin’ dirty, I can’t stand myself!”

"Yeah. We’re pretty ripe, I suppose.”

“That’s putting it lightly. I can still smell that scummy green Pittsburgh water on me! And that was, like, a week ago! Or more! Ugh!”

Joel reluctantly agreed. He had been trying put the worst of the places they’d been lately out of his mind. The flooded basement of the hotel, in particular, was something he didn't want to think about.

“Popped my head in there a few minutes ago. There’s a few clean towels and washcloths in there, on a rack on the wall. So now you can stop using mine.”

“Hey! I packed for a daytrip to the capitol building. I’m lucky I have a change of clothes and a toothbrush!”

She suddenly thought of something.

“Hey! Can I wash my damn clothes? They really need it!”

“’Fraid not, kiddo. Not enough water here for that. You’ll just have to change into the least dirty set you have.”

She tried to swallow her unhappy grunt. Failed.

“Can I at least wash my socks? They’re all sweaty. Wet and gross. The other pair is as stiff as a board.”

“I insist on that. Don’t wanna get trench foot or somethin’.”

She was afraid to ask what that was.

He led her inside the bathroom, illuminated by his flashlight and what little of the fading sunlight that made it around the edge of the door. He filled the sink with some water from the partially full jug and poured the rest of the container into a small plastic vessel that he called an ‘ice bucket’, even though there was no ice in it.

“Here. Wash in this one. Rinse off in this one. Just like hobos used to do. There’s a whole bunch of soap and shampoo in the tub. Looks like someone was stockpilin’ the stuff in here.” She looked. The bottom of the tub was covered with dozens of small, wrapped bricks of soap. Numerous little bottles of shampoo were mixed into the pile as well. She picked one bar up, read the label, unwrapped it carefully, sniffed it.

_Jasmine and honeysuckle? I guess this is what those things smell like? Smells nice._

“Why would soap come in such tiny bars? The bars at the military prep school were, like, ten times as big as this.”

Joel replied coolly, in the manner of a jaded world traveler. “Motel 6 was famous for its boutique bars of soap, kid. Very expensive. Real fancy stuff for very well to do people. Sophisticated playboys like myself only used the pricey, tiny bars. Big bars of cheap soap? That stuff’s for poor people and orphans.”

“Neat,” she said, taking in all the details of the tiny aromatic cake, wonderment in her voice. A moment passed. “Hey! I’m an orphan! Fuck you, Joel!”

She didn’t want to laugh but couldn’t stop herself. Tired Joel could be clever too.

_Damn it! I walked right into that! Good one, you ass._

A deep, rumbling chuckle. He tousled her ponytail playfully. “Just messin’ with you, kid.”

“God, you’re such a jerk tonight.” She wasn’t hurt, not really. But she didn’t need to be reminded of what she was. Still, he was interacting with her in an affectionate way. She tried to focus on that instead. “You’re so mean to me. I swear, I don’t know why I let you keep hanging out with me.”

_Because nobody else will._

“Just teasin’ you, Red.” He yawned. She yawned in turn.

_Stop that. Those things are contagious._

“So how am I supposed to see in here if I close the door? There aren’t any fucking windows,” she said, looking around, seeing the two of them reflected together in the mirror of the tiny room, suddenly acutely conscious of how close they were standing to each other. The thought of being naked with him around filled her stomach with butterflies. She didn’t know him _that_ well. It was bad enough getting naked in the dormitory showers with all the other girls. But this was different. Way different.

She tried to play it off, the way someone like Tess surely would. “And no way am I getting undressed and taking a ‘hobo bath’ with the door standing wide open. You’re gonna have to go wait out in the fucking parking lot with the clickers or something.”

A friendly slap on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about that, squirt. I got ya covered. Stay here. Be right back.”

He stepped out of the bathroom, was gone for a minute or so, and returned with the other clear plastic jug of water in his hand. In his off hand, he carried his small rectangular LED camping light, the solar powered one that had been clipped to the outside of his backpack all day. Draped over his shoulder was something long and sheer. She pointed to it.

“What’s that?”

“A ladies stockin’. I saw it pokin’ out of that luggage.” He set the jug and the lamp down, held out the stocking so she could see what it was. Long, sheer, very sexy.

“Ooh! I’ve seen those in pictures. Women wore them on their legs to look all sexy and stuff, right?”

“Yep. Now watch closely.”

He placed the camp light flat against the side of the clear jug and deftly tied it in place with the stocking. He flipped the light on and the jug burst into light with a wonderful, wet glow.

“Water lantern,” he said simply, as though it were no big deal, as though he hadn’t just performed an amazing magic trick for her.

She marveled at it, awestruck by the teeming, shimmering pools of light dancing limpidly on the walls all around them.

“So fucking cool,” her voice was hushed, astonished. “When are you going to teach me to do stuff like this?”

“Didn’t you just see me do it?”

Embarrassed. “Uhh… Oh yeah, huh?”

“Then I just taught you, kid.”

“Alright.” Mortified. “Don’t rub it in.”

_I hate it when he teases me. I love it when he teases me. It drives me crazy but in a good way. I wish he was like this all the time._

Another rumbling chuckle. “Good to see I’m not the only one who’s tired tonight.”

“Yeah, yeah. I must be worn out from all the ass I’ve been kicking today.” A sudden flash of insight changed her tone to one of concern. “Oh! Hey! Before I get undressed, let me take a look at that shoulder of yours, Joel.”

”I’m fine, kid. I can handle it. It’s not that bad, really.”

“At least let me clean it out while the water is fresh and clean. Okay?”

A deep, worn out sigh. He was too tired to argue with her. “Alright. Go ahead.”

 

* * *

 

With a foul-smelling exhalation, the infected thing finally sank to one knee, succumbing at last to the massive blood loss. She bent her knees sharply, lifting both her legs up, keeping her shoes from touching the ground, trying to keep all her weight on it. She was still clinging to it with tired arms; her knife sank deep in its neck, twisting it around in the wound as much as she could. She was taking no chances this close to victory.

_Die you, motherfucker! Come on! Die already! Come on!!_

There was the sound of a death rattle, deep inside the foul, fungus-encrusted interior of its chest. Small puffs of yellowish spores jetted from its nostrils and mouth. She clamped her mouth shut, trying not to breathe any of the stuff, more out of a reflex of self-preservation than any conscious thought. She was immune to cordyceps, but she still didn’t want that rotted thing’s foulness inside her. The very thought of it was indescribably vile to her.

_Gack! Yuck! You dirty cocksucker! Gross!_

The thing fell over to one side, seemingly at a glacial pace. With all the adrenaline surging through her body, everything seemed be happening so damn slowly. She closed her eyes as she slowly passed through the thin cloud the hideous thing had expelled. She didn’t open them again until she was safe on the ground and the monster was still.

Ellie staggered up, trying to catch her breath. The world was moving at a normal speed again. The fucking thing was finally dead. She tried to grin proudly, fiercely, in victory, settled instead for sweating and panting joyously, thrilled to still be alive.

_Holy fuck! That was intense! My whole body is shaking like a leaf._

Behind her, she heard Joel grunting. There was an edge of pain to the sound.

_Joel! No!_

 

* * *

 

They were both cleaned up, as best as a person can get clean in a small motel sink with half a gallon of shared, stale water and a small mountain of tiny bars of soap.

She was clad in a thin cotton tank top and her least dirty pair of jeans – she was still too shy around him to wear her little gray gym shorts. She sat on the floor, removing the lids from the cans of food with his old rattletrap can opener, babbling about the day’s events and letting him know that she was trying to be a good hostess here in the luxurious Motel 6 with all the fancy soap and soft towels. He sat with his back to the dresser, having piled the luggage into the chair that he was using to block the locked door, wearing an old pair of sweat pants and a threadbare t-shirt, wondering where she ever learned the word hostess. They were both barefoot and it was their first time seeing each other in what she dubbed their ‘casual wear’. It was the first time since the night in the radio tower with Sam and Henry that they were sleeping safe and sound behind locked doors. Henry had been in the room with Joel. She hadn’t been brave enough to wear the tank top around either of the men. But it was just Joel now. She was just brave enough to wear it tonight.

Her hand went to the bite mark on her right arm for what had to be the fifth time in the last three minutes. In all the time that she and this man had been together, she had never really let him see the scar, not quite so openly and casually as this. She’d been forced to show it to him, when he and Tess had learned she was infected. Tess had made her show it to Joel again, when she had revealed her own bite, near her neck. She’d felt deeply embarrassed and ashamed both times. She hated being a freak. She hated the scar, hated how it had changed her life.

_Oh man… maybe I shouldn’t be wearing this shirt at all. Maybe I should put the dirty shirt back on. At least it’s got long sleeves._

Her fingers traced a light pattern over the contour of the scar, hating every inch of it.

_“You’d better explain fast! Everyone turns within two days! So stop bullshitting!” That’s what Tess said to me. That big gun was in her hand. I was sure she was going to kill me, like she killed that woman, the soldier. I was sure Joel already wanted me dead but he left the decision up to her. I told her that I’d been bitten three weeks ago. I was so scared. I was ready to beg for my life. Not for me, but for the cure I’m carrying. The only thing that saved me was those other soldiers showing up. It gave Joel and Tess time to think, time to talk too. It bought me enough time for them to decide to let me live._

_Marlene was right. I couldn’t let anybody know what had happened to me. Joel told me the same thing. Anybody sees this, they’re going to be afraid of me. Probably try to kill me. It feels so weird to have my arms bare again. It’s been a month since I did. Feels like it’s been a year._

_It’s so fucking ugly. I hate this damned scar._

Her right hand curled into a fist. Her mouth turned down into a frown. She decided to get up and put one of her other shirts on. Those shirts were all filthy, but at least she wouldn’t have to feel ashamed about what had happened to her. She didn’t want to feel so ugly.

She shifted forward, drew her legs up, getting ready to stand up. She saw Joel staring at her, at her bite. She froze, nervous about being in the spotlight of his gaze.

“I’m sorry,” she said apologetically. “I’ll cover it up, okay?”

“What for?” he asked, and yawned mightily, scratched lightly at the two stitches she had put in his shoulder using his travel-sized sewing kit, seemingly not at all bothered by either his wound or the scar on her arm.

“What for?” she repeated, not certain if he was only pretending to be unfazed by it. “Sorry for _this_ , Joel… My nasty fucking _scar_. It’s probably grossing you out, right? I’m sorry, really. I don’t know what I was thinking. And just before dinner time too. I’ll put another shirt on. One with long sleeves.”

“Gross me out? Why would it? Just a scar, kid. I got a ton of ‘em myself.” He shrugged, as though girls with human bite marks were things he ran into every day. “Hell, I knew a guy named Matt who had a big dog bite scar on the back of his leg. Just under the knee.” He indicated the general location on his own leg with clumsy, sleepy hands. “Ever seen a scar from a pit bull? One of those really big, really mean dogs?”

“No. Like the dogs the army uses?” Quiet, still uncertain. Was this a prank? Was he joking with her? Or making fun of her?

“Ugly as hell a bite like that. Long, narrow, ragged thing. All hollowed out inside. Nasty shit,” he said, taking a swig of water from his canteen. “That little thing on your arm? Shit. That’s nothin’. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it one bit, alright?”

“Y-you… you’re… serious? You’re… okay with it?” Her fingers went to it again, half-covering it. She wanted to believe him… but…”I can put another shirt on. I don’t mind.”

He sighed loudly, exhaustedly, making a point of letting her know he was sighing. His mouth was a thin, expressionless line. He locked eyes with her, blinked once, twice. Then his weary eyes very obviously drifted down to the mark on her arm, studied it for a second or two, then slowly and pointedly found their way back up to her anxious face.

“I’m _fine_ with it, kiddo. It’s no big deal. I’ve seen way worse than that. Besides, it’s just the two of us in here. Don’t you _like_ wearin’ short sleeves for a change?”

“Hell yes, I do. It’s way too nice for sleeping in long sleeves tonight.” She wanted to smile, tried to hold it back, still thinking this could all go south in a heartbeat.

He yawned, which made her yawn.

“Then why the hell are we talkin’ about it? It don’t bother me none, Ellie. Hell, I had to see Matt’s giant scooped-out pit bull scar every damn time we made camp. Scrawny little shit head loved wearin’ shorts during down time, like he thought he had sexy supermodel legs or somethin’. Christ, what a character he was. ‘Original Matt’ we called him. Funny guy. Knew a million jokes. You woulda liked him.”

“Original Matt? Why? Because he was one of a kind?” She leaned forward, smiling, thrilled to suddenly find herself in the middle of story time with him. She forgot about the mark on her arm.

“Nah. Well, yeah,” he shrugged, correcting himself a bit. “He was just Matt to begin with, but then he became Original Matt because another Matt joined our crew a little while later. Big Matt we called the new one. Huge fuckin’ guy. Foul-mouthed. Hell raiser. Big Matt was a real troublemaker. You woulda liked him too.”

She giggled, relaxing just a little more. “So many Matts.”

“Yeah, after Big Matt joined up, I had to declare a Two-Matt limit in the crew. Wasn’t sure I had any more nicknames left in me, Red.”

She giggled. She liked Tired Joel. He was funny. And nice to her too.

_He called me ‘Red’. I like that. I hope he calls me that all the time now._

He trailed off into silence, staring at her face but only half seeing her. Story time was over, apparently. She worried that he might drift off to sleep. She tried to think of something to say to keep this moment with him going.

“Think anything’s on TV? And why is this remote nailed to the table?”

“So no one will steal it.” His eyes slowly closed as he spoke.

“Who would steal a dumb remote?”

“Punk kids like you,” he opened one eye, grinned faintly when he said it.

She returned the smile. “Okay, busted. I totally fucking tried to take it. People were a lot smarter back then, I guess.”

“Nah. They just had a lot more punk kids around to deal with. Gave ‘em lots of practice.”

She giggled. He made her feel so perfectly _normal_ tonight. She wanted to hug him but knew he wouldn’t want that. Joel was not a hugger, she could tell.

_Too bad. I’ve got one hell of a big, sloppy hug I’m dying to give him._

 

* * *

 

The stalker stubbornly refused to die. Any human’s throat would have collapsed by now under the pressure of Joel’s iron fingers. But the infection must have spread into this thing’s neck, bolstering the tissues there with a thick fungal lining, as it simply would not yield to his grip. His forearm was beginning to tremble, the thick, corded muscles under the skin were at their limit, had been there for too long already. His other hand was needed to hold the monster’s grasping hand away from his face, his eyes. The reverse point of the axe still embedded in the creature’s chest was a quarter inch into Joel’s shoulder and slowly getting deeper with each passing second. Blood spread across the fabric of his ruined shirt.

The monster pressed against his failing grip with muscles that could never know fatigue. The single, milky eye was set with rage. The terrible mouth inched closer.

Quick, light footsteps. A high-pitched voice.

“Oh no! No no no no! Joel!”

Small sneakers appeared, just at the edge of the corner of his vision. They shifted about, unsure what to do, looking for an opening, trying to figure out a way to attack the monster without hurting her friend or getting in his way. She couldn’t see a way in to join this fight. They were both tangled together in a thrashing pile. She stepped aside nimbly, barely avoiding the twisting, flailing legs.

If she intervened and screwed it up, she knew she might tip the balance in favor of the monster. Its teeth were terrifyingly close to Joel’s neck, its head half hidden behind his. A vile parody of a lover’s embrace.

“Joel! What do you want me to do?!”

 

* * *

 

He rubbed his temple, said that maybe he shouldn’t have snapped at her earlier. He explained he was tired and grumpy. A headache had been dogging him all day. Her eyes went wide at this. Her hand stopped turning the loose handle of the old can opener.

_Riley had a headache. Just before she fell asleep…_

“We shared your water bottle this morning… when mine ran out.” Her words lost volume the further into the sentence she got. A sick, plunging feeling in the pit of her stomach ripped her appetite away from her. “Do… do you think-“

“I’m not fuckin’ infected, Ellie. I’m just fuckin’ tired and I’m fuckin’ all talked out, and I fuckin’ need some _fuckin’ sleep_.”

His grumpy words were almost comforting to her now. He seemed so sure. That morning, he had sworn to her that you couldn’t pass the infection along by sharing a cup or anything. It took blood contact to do that. Saliva wouldn’t do it. She had made him promise that he was sure about that before she dared place her lips on his canteen.

“Jeez, sorry Joel,” her voice returned to her, bringing her hunger along with it. “I’m just trying to help. I was… worried. That’s all.”

A deep, bone-weary sigh. “I know kid. There I go again, snappin’ at you like that. Like I said, I got a headache.”

“Headache? Oh yeah! Fuck, I’m so awesome! Got just the thing for that!”

She hopped up lightly, dashed to her backpack. Joel was momentarily jealous of her youthful energy, her good knees, her abundance of cartilage. After a quick moment rooting around in the depths of her small bag, she returned with a tiny yellow tin and plopped down next to him, her legs drawn up to her chest.

“Anacin,” she said, holding it up for him to see, hoping she was pronouncing the unfamiliar word properly. “Kristi had these in her pocket. Perfect for headaches.”

“Anacin?” his voice was tinged with mild disbelief. “My mom used to swear by these things.”

She popped the tin open, saw that all three tablets were still in there, intact. Two of them said ‘356’ on the sides facing her. The third one read ‘PLIVA’ instead. She picked that one and reached out to him with it in her palm.

“Here, Joel. I’ve got three. Take one. Maybe it’ll help.”

“You seen how big I am? One ain’t gonna cut it. Gimme two of those things.”

“Sure. Here you go.” She grabbed another, dropped the pair of them into his open hand. He swallowed them dry.

“You should drink water with those. They’ll get stuck,” she snickered, hugging her knees, nudging his shin with one bare foot.

He didn’t bother to look and she had no way of knowing, but there were no Anacin tablets in that old tin. It was actually a muscle relaxant known to pharmacists as cyclobenzaprine hydrochloride. Kristi Chau had liberated a small supply of them months before, in the ruins of a Walgreen’s on her way up from Alabama, drifting north again as she always did when spring returned. Nights were hard for Kristi, always traveling all alone. On the blessed moments when she found a safe, secure place to bed down for a day or two, she had to make sure she slept as much and as deeply as possible.

“Thanks, kid.”

“No problem, Joel.” She was always happy to help.

 

* * *

 

With the last of his reserves, Joel shoved at the monster’s neck, his thumb jammed under the hinge of its jaw, no longer trying to crush the damned thing’s throat, but rather move it as far away from his own face as possible. Inch by damnable inch, he levered it back, giving the kid time to find a place to strike, twisting his legs around it, holding the slithering thing as still as possible.

“Ellie!” he croaked, almost inaudibly.

She was on it in a flash, straddling it, straddling him, trusting Joel to keep the thing’s head steady, keep its grasping hand away from her leg. She brought the knife down into the side of the skull, trying to chip through the fungal plate that sprouted there. Once! Twice! Three times! Four! Five! Six!

_Die! Fucking die!!_

Seven! Eight! The monster shuddered and died at last. Nine! Ten! Joel pushed himself away from it. Eleven! For one awkward moment, Ellie was bestride both man and monster. Twelve! Thirtee-! She was still stabbing, trying to dismount the creature, but Joel’s efforts to dislodge himself from beneath it sent her sliding off to one side, the handle of the embedded fire axe passing underneath her crotch painfully. She yelped. His strong hands reached up, grabbing her around the waist, pulling her along with him as he scooted across the asphalt, away from the dying abomination. She found herself sitting across his upper thighs, looking down on him as he lay on his back, gulping down air as fast as he could. His whole body was shaking, she could feel the tremors through her hands on his belly. His ragged shirt had been reduced to sweat-drenched strips. The bloody wound in his shoulder had made a large stain on what remained of the fabric.

“Holy shit, Joel! That was close, huh?” She leaned forward, very tired too. Her hands slid down to rest on his hips. Sweat dripped from her face, making small dark circles on his denim jeans. Neither one of them stopped to think about the intimacy implied by their positions. Theirs wasn’t that kind of partnership. Not yet.

“E-ellie…” he panted.

“Y-yeah?”

“Gonna n-need… those legs b-back… in a minute, girl.”

“Sure… No p-problem.”

She rolled off him in the boneless way that kids so easily can, coming to rest limply alongside him on the blacktop. They lay there like that for a minute or more, breathing rapidly at first, then more slowly, looking up at the reddening sky, waiting for a second wind that was slow to come.

“We… should prob’ly… get inside… soon.”

“Sure… Joel… Lead the… way.”

“A’right… Inna… minute.”

“’Kay.”

 

* * *

 

Joel stared blankly into his scraped clean can of corned beef hash. He didn’t really remember eating his share of the can. There was a peach slice in his mouth. He was idly chewing it. He realized he must have half-dozed through dinner.

Gotta get some sleep soon, he thought. Almost dark.

Ellie had finished her meal, wiped clean the camping plate she had borrowed from him in the bathroom sink. She now stood by the nightstand where their pistols and flashlights lay, studying the three small glass bottles that had been sitting there since before they arrived, waiting for a woman who had never returned.

She held each bottle up to the window, reading the labels in the fading light.

_Let’ see… We have ‘Strawberry Daiquiri’, ‘Hawaiian Apple Passion’, and ‘Fuzzy Navel’. Ick. The last one sounds disgusting._

Joel sat, watching her study the bottles, but not really seeing her at all. His mind was on other things, trying to remember where Tess had found that purple flannel shirt that she loved seeing him wear so much – especially on certain occasions, like when they went out to get a meal together. Almost like something normal people would do. Almost like they were a couple, not just business partners that occasionally screwed each other’s brains out.

Probably that fast talking creep, Terrence, I bet. He usually had a line on good clothing. Jeans, boots, coats, fancy underwear even, if you were of a mind for that sort of thing. Rumor was he knew a guy who had a lonely scavenger camp set up in an old Marshall’s department store somewhere in the nearby town of Brookline. No telling what she had to do to get Terrence to part with that shirt.

Never liked that shit head, he thought to himself, a frown coming over his face.

“Holy shit, Joel. This is the best juice ever! Omigod!”

“What?” he slipped out of his reverie and focused his eyes on the girl in front of him. She was practically brimming with joy. Her feet almost danced as she shifted from one to the other, excitedly. “What are you talkin’ about, Ellie?”

“It’s called Hawaiian Apple Passion, Joel,” she said, her words tumbling out in a rush. “I can practically taste the surf! There are hula girls doing all sorts of amazing things in my mouth! They’re delicious, Joel! They taste just like hula girls should taste!”

“Let me see that,” he said tiredly, reaching up to her, too worn out to deal with whatever this new unfolding drama was. She pulled it away from his outstretched hand. “No way! Get your own, buddy! There’s two left. Plenty to go around!”

Laughing, she lobbed him one of the bottles. He caught it against his belly. Holding it up in the half-light of the dim room, he read the label aloud.

“Bartles & Jaymes. Flavored Malt Alcohol Cooler,” he mumbled, already not liking where this was going. He read the last two words with a very long sigh. “Fuzzy Navel.”

“Man, I’ve been drinking juice all my fucking life, Joel. I never knew it could be this fucking awesome,” she gushed with complete sincerity, continuing to dance lightly in front of the window, humming to herself. “I’m never going back to boring old powdered ‘fruit punch’ mix again, I can tell you that. Not after tasting the passion of Hawaiian apples. No fucking way. Plain old fruit punch can lick my balls!”

Joel weighed his options. Considered the events of the day, of the last week, of the last twenty years. He failed utterly to work up a good speech to give her about why this was a bad idea and she was way too young for this stuff. He just didn’t have it in him to be a responsible adult, as tired as he was. He just didn’t have any more ‘Good Joel’ in him tonight.

Ahhh… Screw it, he thought, twisting off the cap of the bottle.

“Here’s to your health, kid,” he said with a weary smile, raising the bottle.

She skipped across the carpet on bare feet that almost didn’t touch the ground. Their bottles clinked together happily.

“Mozel tov!” she cheered.

He took a swig. It wasn’t bad, as far as girly drinks went. Hardly stale at all.

“You’re Jewish?”

“No? Why would you think that?” Her eyes were full of questions, but her mouth was full of bottle. The questions would have to come back later, if she could remember them.

“Never mind, kid. Bottoms up.”

 

* * *

 

Tess got me that damn shirt, he seethed to himself, furious at what he had allowed to happen to it, what he had almost allowed to happen to himself, to the kid.

He stomped its head with his work boot, cracking the fungus-splintered skull apart.

“Holy shit, Joel!”

_It’s dead! What the fuck has gotten into him?!_

Fucking thing! Piece of shit! He kicked the body, knocking the fire axe loose with a clatter.

Ellie reached out uncertainly, trying to bring him back from the place his anger took him during a particularly close fight. But this was different. The fight was over. His anger should have dissipated with it. But it hadn’t, for some reason. Her fingers nervously wrapped around his wrist, just above his clenched fist, trying to connect with him despite the fear she felt welling up inside her. She wasn’t sure she knew this man in front of her.

_I thought for sure he was going to hit me in the parking lot of that Shell station. Now this… How much anger does he have inside? Where is coming from? What caused it?_

“Joel? Can we go inside now? Please?”

_Please. You’re scaring me._

“Huh? Oh yeah. Good idea, Ellie. Let’s go.” It was like a fog had lifted. He came back from wherever he had been and looked at her as though he had forgotten she was there.

He took her hand and led her across the parking lot, to the staircase that led up to the top floor of the two-story building. She stayed close to his side, almost a second shadow. She hoped that he wouldn’t slip away like that again. She held his hand extra tight to keep that from happening. She had never held his hand like this before. Not since they had buried the brothers and she had slipped her fingers into his palm for half a minute or so. This was different. He was holding her hand firmly. She never wanted him to let go.

_He can be so scary. But right now I feel so safe…Weird._

“You wanna pick out the room?” His voice was far away, as though he were in a daze.

”Me? Really? Okay!” she brightened visibly. He had never asked her to make any real decisions before. She vowed that she wouldn’t let him down. She would pick a good room for them.

 

* * *

 

They sat on the floor, each with their back against their respective beds, facing each other. The very last rays of twilight filled the room, suffusing everything with a warm, ruddy glow.

“Feeling better?” her belly was full of alcohol, her voice was filled with warmth. She cared about this man a great deal.

“A lot, actually. The aspirin and the food really helped. This cooler hit the spot too.” He shook the empty bottle in his hand for emphasis.

“Cooler?”

"This stuff we’re drinkin’. It ain’t juice.”

“Ah! … I… uhhh… I sorta… suspected that…”

“Uh-huh,” his inflection was deadpan, unsurprised. “And how long have you had these suspicions, Ellie?”

“Juice doesn’t feel so warm going down,” she offered weakly, holding her empty bottle in her lap, turning it around subtly so the label didn’t show, as though that would somehow absolve her of guilt. “But I needed to drink the whole bottle to be sure. Didn’t want to rush to judgment, you know?”

He smiled in bemusement, knowing he shouldn’t encourage shit like this, but too tired to work up enough energy to stop either himself or her. “I respect your integrity, Red.”

“Yep. I’m a big believer in… ummm… whatever word you just said,” she said, like the pure-hearted, upstanding citizen that she was. She broke into a grin, finally accepting that he wasn’t going to yell at her for accidentally not reading the entire label – an honest mistake, no doubt. She leaned back, poked at him with her big toe, pointed up at the little table with the hand that was still holding the empty bottle. “There’s one left. Strawberry something-or-other. Wanna split it?”

Her almost innocent smile made Joel shake his head and chuckle softly. She was playing him. Forty-eight years old and he was being manipulated by a teenage girl in a tight shirt.

She was leaning back, her weight on her hands, her back arched, her head cocked to the side, loose red hair spilling around her shoulders, smiling sweetly, as she tried to charm him into letting her have another bottle of booze. Did she even know how she looked to him at that moment? He wasn’t sure. Didn’t think so. But maybe…

Fuck, I shouldn’t even be noticing this. I’m more tired than I thought, I guess. Too damned tired. Thinking all sorts of thoughts I shouldn’t be. Noticing things about her that I shouldn’t. Like the fact that she probably outgrew that shirt last year. Damn thing’s skintight. Thank Christ she’s still wearing a bra under it or else I’d be able to see her…

She grinned naughtily. She bumped her foot against the side of his to get his attention. She wanted something from him. His mind had drifted and he tried to remember what it was. He felt himself becoming very tranquil, very amenable to the idea of just spending time with her, talking with her. He kind of liked this kid. She was sweet, in her own way. And cute. Damn cute. And he actually wanted to take the time needed to talk with her tonight. It wasn’t like him. He had no idea that muscle relaxants were coursing through his blood. All he could do was feel guilty for noticing how nice her hips looked in those jeans, how tight her shirt was.

Tess would get a kick out of this, I bet. She manipulated me the same damn way. Now there was a woman who could wear the hell out of a shirt that was too small for her.

He smiled, his mind drifting back to that summer night that Tess talked him into a particularly dangerous and stupid and incredibly lucrative smuggling gig he wanted nothing to do with. But sitting across from her in her apartment, with her wearing that skintight, threadbare, almost sheer white cotton t-shirt with the three-quarter sleeves and the deep, scooped neckline.

Christ, he thought, the way she filled out that shirt, it was like lingerie on her. Damn thing was practically see-through once the evening heat brought a little sweat to her skin. No bra. Just those big, beautiful tits on display. Just for me. God, she played me like a fiddle.

And now this girl’s doing the same thing, somehow. Man, I don’t even want to think about it. I don’t even like that I’m having these thoughts. I need some damn sleep.

“Wellllll…?” she was saying, her voice sly. She was ready to misbehave.

Oh, that’s right! The alcohol, he thought, suddenly remembering. She wants some booze.

“Sure,” he relented with a resigned shrug of his aching shoulders. “But don’t get any backwash in there, kiddo.”

She bounded up effortlessly and bopped over to the remaining bottle, a jazzy air guitar solo on her lips.

“Don’t wanna get infected by me? I get it. Way to hurt my feelings, butt head. Come on! What’s a little cordyceps between friends?”

“Cordyceps can’t live in alcohol, doofus. I just don’t wanna drink any of your spit.”

She opened the bottle, carried it over to him, smiling beautifully with each step, happy to share this moment with him.

“Either way, that’s pussy talk, Joel. I’d expect more from a manly man like you.”

She offered him the first swig. Strawberry Daiquiri. Very sweet and syrupy.

“Shut up before I smack the freckles off you,” he groused, lips already working their way around rim of the bottle. She kicked at him playfully.

Ellie had a sudden attack of the giggles as she took the proffered bottle from him. She didn’t realize that she had drunk her cooler too quickly. She was buzzing. It felt sort of like the few times Riley had snuck beer into their dorm room, but this was much more pleasant. Fruitier. She wanted to snuggle into this warm feeling and stay there forever.

Joel didn’t realize that he had mixed muscle relaxants and alcohol. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so optimistic and laid back about things. He felt incredibly light. The fatigue began to lift from him. He felt positively energetic somehow.

She sat next to him, facing him, her lovely, denim-covered legs stretched out alongside him, her hips by his knees, so close they were almost touching. She would have never dared to sit so near to him without the fruity coolers lending her so much bravery. She couldn’t guess that the alcohol was having an effect on him too. He had never really noticed what nice legs she had until tonight.

“I’m really happy I have you around, Joel,” she said, as she passed the bottle back to him again. “I don’t know how I’d make to the Fireflies without your help. I really owe you.”

It was as close as she dared come to admitting how much he was coming to mean to her.

He chuckled, shook his head, and looked up at the ceiling. It seemed to be rotating in slow, pleasant circles. He took another swig.

“I’m serious,” he heard her saying. “I like you, Joel. I _trust_ you, Joel.”

_Hear what I’m not saying, Joel. Read my fucking mind, already. Let me stick around. I’m not asking you to be my foster dad. I won’t even hope that you’d ever see me like family or anything. You don’t have to adopt me or nothing. Just let me stay with you. I won’t get in the way. I promise. Please. Let me keep helping you like I helped you today._

Joel was hearing something else. Oh, Christ. She’s drunk. And I hope she’s not getting a crush on me or some shit like that. He shuddered inwardly, handing the bottle off to her again. Dear God, I don’t need some love struck teenager in tow all the way to Tommy’s. Especially not a pretty one like her, not with legs as nice as she’s got. I cannot have that kind of temptation. Not when I’m drunk. And when since when did a weak, girly drink like one of these damn coolers get me drunk? God, I’m more tired than I thought. Two coolers and I’m flying tonight.

She tipped her head back, drained the last of the contents. He tried not to notice her little pink tongue playing along the rim of the bottle, seeking out every last drop. He tried not to notice how it slid out from between her small, full lips. He tried not to, but failed.

Goddamn, that’s sexy, he thought and hated himself for feeling that way about her.

”AHHHhhhh!” She wiped her lips with the back of her left forearm. “That hit the spot, right?”

“You bet it did. Time to hit the hay now, kid. It’s late.”

Joel stood up on weary legs, took one last look outside the window, at the darkening world beyond, making sure that the Gold Wing was still safely tucked away between the two SUVs down below. He pulled the heavy curtains shut. The room was instantly engulfed into blackness.

Better if I can’t see her, he thought. Not in those jeans. Not in that tight shirt. She’s too damn young and I’m way too drunk. I can’t see her like that. Can’t think of her like that.

Sleep it off. Sober up. Put it behind you. Pretend these thoughts never happened.

“Ooh! Spooky!” her voice came from the darkness, from the spot on the floor where he had left her, from the floor at the edge of his bed.

“If we’re gonna be safe up here,” he explained, “then we have to keep the blinds drawn. Any lights we have in here after sunset have to be kept hidden. Yeah?”

"Sure,” she said, tipsy and enthusiastic about everything. “Wanna tell ghost stories now? I know some great ones!”

He heard her scampering around in the darkness. She was unzipping her backpack.

“Here! Let me get my flashlight! I’ll shine it under my chin!”

With a sigh that was much louder than it needed to be, he fell into bed and pulled the covers up.

I’ll be sober in the morning, he told himself. She’ll be a kid again, once I’ve sobered up. She won’t be a… woman… or whatever it is that my dick’s trying to tell me she is.

The room lit up from the soft glow of her lamp.

“Go to sleep, Ellie.”

“But I’m not tired! And I’ve got this great story about a couple in a car, and they go parking to kiss and stuff, and there’s this crazy infected guy with a hook for a hand. You’re gonna love it. Come on! Look! I’ve got my scary face going on over here!”

“You _will_ be tired. Just give it a minute. And turn that light off!”

She did.

“It’s dark again, Joel,” she announced with utter solemnity.

“You’ve had too much to drink, kiddo. So sleep it off. Go to bed.”

“But it’s all so new to me, Joel. I don’t have any frame of reference. How can I tell if I’ve had too much to drink?” From the sound of her soft footsteps, she was moving back and forth in the darkness, revved up and ready to go.

“’Frame of –‘,” he began. “You shouldn’t be drinkin’ _at all_. Any amount more than ‘none at all’ is too much! I don’t know what the hell I was thinkin’. Now go to bed, I said.”

Fuck, I should have known better than this, he thought. Why the hell did I let myself stumble into this mess? She doesn’t even realize the sort of thoughts she’s put in my head. She’s too young to even know about that kind of stuff in the first place.

“But you’re the one who gave the beer to me.” She peeked out from behind the curtain, letting just a small sliver of moonlight into the room.

“No, I didn’t,” he said, face down in his pillows. “You just started drinkin’ them without saying anything. And they’re malt coolers, not beer. _And close that damn curtain_.”

“How am I supposed to tell the difference?” her voice echoed from inside the bathroom. She was in the darkness, fumbling around with the piles of soap and shampoo. “They’re practically the same as beer, except they taste way, way better. Like a hundred times better. And you can’t expect me to be the responsible one anyway. I’m fourteen! You’re, like, a hundred and six! And it’s your job to look out for me, bucko! You’re getting paid by the Fireflies to do it! You don’t want me ratting you out to them about this night, do you?”

“Go. _To_. _Sleep_.” He groused.

For a long moment, the room was filled with a wonderful silence.

Please go to sleep, kid. Please. Before I… we… do something we’ll regret.

“Will you tell me a bedtime story?” she whispered, just inches from his ear.

Goddamn this kid can be quiet when she wants to be.

Her breath had tickled his ear, making him stir, stiffen just a bit. He was glad he was face down on the mattress.

He had said nice things to her earlier, trying to put her mind at ease about her scar. He remembered thinking that he ought to tell her she was pretty too, knew that girls of all ages liked to hear things like that. But he also remembered that he thought it wasn’t appropriate for him to say something like to her. He was tired. He couldn’t trust his judgment tonight. He had wanted to tell her, because it was true, but knew he shouldn’t.

But now he couldn’t remember what he had said to her, exactly. Had he told her how pretty she was? Was that part of the reason she was acting like this? Did he put the wrong ideas in her head by accident? He racked his sleepy brain, but couldn’t remember.

He felt the mattress sink just a little bit as she placed her hand on it, pressed her weight down upon it, leaned across it on one slender arm to hover her face over his.

Oh Lord, no, he prayed frantically, drunkenly. Keep her away from me.

“Pretty please, Joel?” she cooed so incredibly softly, her breath hot and sensuous on his cheek, stirring his guilty loins even more, making him inexcusably half-erect under the sheet, discretely hidden against the dubious safety of a big mattress that suddenly seemed that it was only half as occupied as it ought to be, as he wanted it to be, as a swiftly hardening part of him passionately _needed it to be_.

Plenty of room in the bed, Joel, his cock was telling him. C’mon. Ask the girl to join us. We could use the company tonight.

She giggled drunkenly, having the time of her life. She was very close, hovering over him. He could feel the warmth radiating from her body. Her unbound red hair brushed against his neck. Did she have any idea what kind of effect she was having on him?

Nothin’ better than virgin pussy, buddy, the thing between his legs reminded him. Sweetest tasting peach there is.

Lord, he said to himself, hoping he wasn’t saying it aloud, please don’t let me have told her how good-looking I’m finding her tonight. This shit’ll just get awkward. And pretty damn sinful, I suspect. So help me do the right thing here, okay? At least until I’m rested up and back in my right mind tomorrow. Please. For her sake as much as my mine.

He carefully reached out into the darkness, his hand found her small, warm shoulder (Thank you, God! That could have gone very wrong!) and slowly pushed her away.

“Ellie,” he said as firmly as he could, not looking at her, making certain each syllable of each word carefully enunciated. “I. Am. Going. To. Knock. Your. Damn. Block. Off.”

She stuck her bottom lip out in a perfect pout, realized it wasn’t going to do her any good in the darkness, and stalked off to her side of the room.

_There has to be some way to convince him to keep me around._

She crawled into her bed, sliding under the comfy covers, and lay there, buzzing slightly, wondering what to do. Her thoughts bubbled and fizzed pleasantly inside her head. Thinking was much easier with a few coolers in you. Every plan was a good one.

_How do I convince you I can bring something to this team, Joel… Something you need…_

An idea came to her. She giggled. Rolled over. Tossed the covers aside. Slid her legs over the side. This plan was fucking perfect!

He could feel her staring at him in the darkness.

“Joel.” She practically sang his name.

“Ellie.” His voice was flat, a monotone, muffled by the pillow around his face.

“Jo-oel.” Two syllables, a song that only she knew.

Exasperated now, he sat up, a leg pulled up carefully to hide his arousal, ready to slap the everloving shit out of her. He thought better of it, prepared to throw a pillow at her instead. Safer that way. He wouldn’t have to get out of bed. She wouldn’t see he was half-hard already. She didn’t need to see that. God only knew what see might do in her condition if she saw what kind of state he was in.

This little firecracker trusts you, his cock reminded him. She’d do whatever you asked her to do. She’d enjoy it too. You _know_ she would, buddy. Go on, give that little peach a taste. She’ll thank you for it. She'll _love_ you for it.

She’d run like hell if she was smart, he told himself, told his cock, told his miserable excuse for a soul, hating himself at that moment. And if she doesn’t, I’m gonna have to. Gotta save her from myself. Fuck, what the hell has gotten into me?

“What _is it_ kid? What _the fuck_ do you _want_?”

Lord, don’t let it be me she’s wanting. I don’t think I’ll be able to turn her away, drunk as I am. I’ve already got half a stack of wood going on down there.

“I’m just… thinking… about something…” Whatever it is, she was dragging it out for her own amusement now.

Oh, hell. I’m almost afraid to ask, he thought. Surely she can’t be having the same thoughts I am. She’s too young, right? Oh, God. She’s gotta be! Cause if she isn’t…

Oh Christ. What if she wants us to… fuck?

He grew rock hard quickly. So fast it surprised him with the intensity, like he was a teenager again.

Fuck her, buddy! She’s practically begging for it! Look at her! She wants it! I want it! We all want it, buddy! Go on! Stick me in her!

In panic, he threw himself down at the bed, rolled over, trying to leave her behind him in the near dark of the room. He had almost been able to make her out in the soft fuzz of moonlight that inched in around the edges of the curtain, sitting on the edge of her bed, lovely legs crossed at the ankles, little feet swinging excitedly, small hands resting on the edges of the mattress by her enticing hips, shirt stretched tightly across her sexy, perky breasts, leaning forward from her tiny waist with great expectation. Her white teeth had shone in the frame of her beautiful face. Her emerald eyes had glittered provocatively.

Oh God. You gotta do something, Lord. Right now! If she comes over here again, I don’t know what I’m liable to do. I don’t know what in the hell’s come over me tonight, but I’m drunk and horny and sick in the head. I need that girl in every way that’s wrong.

“Thinkin’ about what, you drunk little brat?” he spoke from deep within his pillow, praying she would just stay the hell on her side of the room.

Ellie flicked on the water jug lamp. The darkness was driven away by a shimmering, joyous light show. The watery luminescence rippled across the walls in a lovely, liquid way.

“Hee hee.” A devilish sound.

He rolled over, careful to hide his throbbing erection, ready to yell at her. He was at the very end of his rope with her. This had to stop before it was too late.

He froze at the sight of her, standing in the space between the beds, looking at him with mischievous, drunken, gorgeous eyes. He was drunk too, nervous, burning up with a terrible and forbidden lust, uncertain of what she was about to do next, somehow both hoping for and dreading a disgraceful, degenerate, wonderful consummation.

He swallowed audibly.

She smiled impishly.

His breath caught in his throat. He tried to say something, anything, to discourage her. But the words wouldn’t come. He couldn’t say them. Didn’t want to say to them.

She spoke. Her voice was the barest, softest, drunkest, velvet purr.

“I _know_ what you _need_ , Joel…”

Jackpot! Hot young redheaded pussy, still in the original wrapper! You're gonna thank me for this later, buddy!

Oh, Jesus. Help me…

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stories that jump back and forth in time are always fun to write. And Ellie gets drunk! (Though not for the first time in her life, as we shall learn in a future chapter) And she gets Joel drugged out on booze and muscle relaxants. What could possibly go wrong?
> 
> It was a nice to get a little bit of Riley into this story. I have lots more planned for her in the future. She was such an important, influential figure in Ellie’s life that you almost can’t get into who Ellie really is without touching on her relationship with her best friend.
> 
> And for those who don’t know, that ‘water lamp’ trick totally works. I use it when I go camping all the time. The first time I used it here in the house, during a power outage, Michelle acted like I had performed a magic trick. I see no reason why Ellie wouldn’t be similarly impressed. :D
> 
> The next chapter brings with it “Flying To Wyoming’s”first graphic sex scene. So consider this fair warning! Explicit stuff abounds in Chapter Seven: Wonderful Regrets.


	7. Wonderful Regrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is one long sex scene. See you again at the closing notes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you missed the warning in the summary, this chapter features fairly explicit sexual content, and quite a lot of it, so consider this fair warning.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 07 – Wonderful Regrets**

 

This was a mistake. They both knew it. In the morning, they would blame the alcohol. He would regret it more than her, since he was supposed to be the one who was old enough to know better, but in this heated moment, neither of them possessed the willpower to stop. She had wanted this for a while, almost since she first laid eyes on him. He had his own needs too, but guilt could weigh heavy on a man. More than a woman might guess, sometimes. In the years before they’d met, he had done things. Terrible things. His hands weren’t clean, but he reckoned that hers were a little bit soiled too.

This was wrong. It would only complicate things. They barely knew each other. She had traveled with him a bit, fought at his side a few times, and that sort of thing tended to draw people to one another, but she didn’t _really know_ him. Earlier, she had said she trusted him. The words were a knife that pricked at the edges of an old wound that he wouldn’t show to anyone, not even to himself. He didn’t see himself as trustworthy, but he could see it there in her eyes, nonetheless. And she was loyal. She would always have his back. She could have stayed hidden behind that rusting heap of a car when everything had gone to shit earlier that evening, but she didn’t. She came rushing out of her hiding place, eyes fierce, teeth bared, ready for a fight. She had his back, no matter what may come. That had always been a rare thing to find in the world. Rarer still today, now that the world had all but gone.

She was younger than him. Too young, really, if he thought about the span of years between then. If things like that mattered in this world anymore. But she was tough. And this world had made her grow up fast, like everyone her age. Too fast, really.

They would blame the alcohol. The words passed unspoken between them as their hands sought each other, fumbling with the unwanted obstacle of clothing, a silent compact that would allow them to give in to their mutual lust and leave regrets and worry for the next day. With any luck, they could leave it behind them when they left this place, this room. This bed.

They sat on the edge of the mattress, her arms raised as he pulled her shirt over her head. He glimpsed the wispy traces of hair under her arms and tried not to remember a time when razors were easy to come by. Her hands were small but strong on his shoulders as he slipped his hands around to her back to unhook her bra. Large, calloused, his questing fingers slid across the smooth skin of her back, finding only slick fabric.

“It hooks in the front, genius,” she giggled into his ear, nipping the edge of his earlobe with her teeth. The girlishness of the laugh contrasted with the feel of her teeth. The flirty confidence and the brazen aggression on display surprised him, though he supposed it shouldn’t have. Everyone grew up fast these days.

His big hands slid around her small body quickly, the speed betraying his burning need for her. Fingers found the clasp, the soft nylon and spandex fabric parted, revealing her soft breasts. His hands sought them eagerly. She groaned, her arms dropping to her sides as she shimmied out of the undergarment. He kneaded her tender flesh.

“Mmmm, that feels nice.” Lust had made her voice husky. It was incredible turn on to him.

He kissed her. Their lips pressed together roughly, almost bruising her. She opened her mouth and he felt her tongue at his lips. He let her in, his hands still cupping her breasts, pressing them together, thumbs tracing small circles around the tips of them. Her fingers found the back of his head and wove their way into his hair. She pulled hard, breaking their kiss.

She purred, “Don’t go all gentle on me now, Joel. I’m a big girl. Get a little rough.”

He growled, “Oh, I can do rough, little girl.”

His fingers pinched and twisted. She gasped, arching her back. One small hand pulled hard at the fabric of his shirt.

“Fuck! That’s it!” she squeaked, gritting her teeth, enjoying the oh-so-good pain.

He leaned in to her exposed neck, biting gently at the sensitive skin. His tongue traced small patterns across her salty flesh. She groaned, writhing against him. He lowered his head to her breasts, his tongue darting over her nipples, sucking on them hard. One of her hands worked its way down to his bicep, pressing against it, feeling the size and hardness of the muscle. She shivered as he tugged at one of her nipples with his teeth.

“Okay. No more foreplay,” there was a harsh, hungry edge to her voice. She slid out of his arms, laying back, unhooking her jeans.

“You sure?” he asked, helping her slide the denim off, his eyes feasting on the sight of her creamy thighs.

“I’m so wet you could drown a cat down there,” she laughed, flashing a wanton smile. “I’d offer to suck your cock, just to be polite, but I can’t wait to get to the main event.”

She hooked the elastic waistband of her panties and pushed them down, passing them off to him like a baton race, allowing him to take them the rest of the way to the finish line. She kicked off the jeans and underwear around her ankles, aware all the while of how his eyes were fixated on the velvety triangle of soft curls between her slightly open legs. He looked ready to devour her. She too thought of the world that had passed her by, with razors for sale in every store and tried to put it out of her mind. She focused on his intense eyes instead, at how they stared hungrily at her exposed flesh.

“Been a while for you, huh?” she asked, trying to keep the anxiousness out of her voice.

“More than a while,” he said, his voice a husky growl, tearing his eyes away from her naked sex with great effort, forcing himself to gaze into her heavily lidded, beguiling eyes. “But don’t worry none, I still remember what to do.”

“Hurry up and get undressed then. I can’t wait any longer. And we gotta get some sleep after this. Big day tomorrow. Lots of miles to cover. So come on, let’s get to it.”

He smirked, stood up, the aching need he was feeling apparent both on his face and across the front of his Levi’s. As he unbuttoned his cowboy shirt, she scooted to the edge of the mattress and began to undo his belt buckle.

“You sure you can’t find the time for a blowjob?” he chuckled, his voice strained. He tossed the shirt aside, began working his gray t-shirt up his flat stomach, across his broad, hairy chest, and over his head. “Since we’re settin’ our own schedule, there ain’t exactly no reason to be on the clock tonight. What’s the hurry?”

“ _The hurry_ is I’m horny as hell and I can’t wait another damn minute to get you into this bed with me, Joel.” Another girlish laugh while she let the belt dangle from its loops, the buckle swinging back and forth. The button of his fly came undone easily. She traced a finger along the bulge in his jeans. She looked up at him with gleaming, mischievous eyes. “Besides, I gotta save _something_ for next time. If I give it all away tonight, how will I convince you to keep coming back for more?”

“I won’t take much convincin’ of that, beautiful.” His voice was low, full of anticipation.

He looked down at her, as her small hands worked at the zipper of his jeans. His big arms hung at his sides, that broken watch on his wrist. One of these days, she promised herself, she was going to ask him what exactly was the deal with that stupid watch.

She unzipped his jeans and released him from confinement. He groaned, grateful to be free. She grinned in satisfaction, her eyes widened in naked lust at the sight of it.

“Damn. I guess everything really is bigger in Texas.” An appreciative click of the tongue. Sparkling eyes that drank in the sight of him. She wrapped her small fingers around the base, holding him firmly, and gave it an adorable little peck with her lips.

“Mwah!” she said as her lips left the tip of him, an exaggerated kissing noise. Her fingertips brushed against his swollen balls, lingering there a moment, tickling them, tormenting him. He groaned and smiled. She let go of his pulsing member, reaching down to slide his jeans the rest of the way to his feet. He stepped out of them.

The contrast between the girl and the woman in her made him desire her with an intensity that left him throbbing visibly. Only a week or so together now, and he had never expected to see this side of her. He wondered if she had ever let anyone see her like this.

She seemed somehow both older and younger at the same time. It was intoxicating. It was also a mistake, but he didn’t care. Not tonight.

“You change your mind about that blowjob, you just let me know.” He tried to sound playful, but his blood was running too hot.

A flash of white teeth. Shameless. She laughed seductively, laying back on the bed, stretching out to her full length, her hair spreading out on the pillow around her head, her naked body luxuriating against the mostly clean sheets. She felt very small next to him. She thrilled at the difference. “Next time, I promise.”

He made his way across the mattress to her; she opened her legs in anticipation, making room for him. He ran a hand along the inside of her silken thigh. She shuddered adorably. A moan slipped from her soft mouth. He wanted to kiss her. And not just on one particular set of lips.

“You sure you ain’t in the mood for a little somethin’…extra?” he teased, his hand sliding up, finding her wet and eager. She opened her legs wider, almost by reflex. Her hips moved of their own accord, pressing herself against his rough hand.

“Oh, God! Would you just fuck me already! I’m gonna lose my patience and hit you in a minute!”

“Little lady knows what she likes,” he told her in a low, rumbling, frisky way. He eased himself up over her, supporting himself easily with his powerful arms, looking down at her with an expression of barely restrained yearning.

“Goddamn right she does” she reached for him, her small hands sliding up, under his arms, around to his back. It was an electric feeling for both of them.

She tilted her hips back; felt him guiding himself towards her, along her tingling, swollen lips. Seeking entrance.

“Easy, easy… Don’t rush… Gimme a minute,” she heard herself saying the words. Her voice was filled with longing, craving. Her body needed this. If this was a mistake, she was happy to make it. She reached down with one hand, opened herself. “Here… c'mon… I’m ready.”

He entered her slowly, almost in stages, filling her in a way that made ripples flow out from her center, washing over her, warming her all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes. Her mouth opened and she found she couldn’t close it.

“Oh, God. Joel,” she groaned, her entire body suffused with the white-hot need for him. “I…”

Words failed her for a moment. She was good with words. Better than him, anyway. Words served her faithfully, often better than guns or knives could. They were her only true friends in this fucked up world. She was not accustomed to being without words.

“Yeah,” he rasped, his face hovering achingly close to hers. She felt his hot breath in her mouth. She brought her lips closer to his, wanting to breathe his air. He groaned. “Me too.”

She wrapped her legs around his hips, locked her ankles, curled her toes, felt him as he began to work in her, agonizingly slowly at first.

“Oh, God, Joel… I need this… so much.”

“Me too, Tess,” he whispered. “Me too.”

She kissed him, using the moment to recover herself a bit. She didn’t want Joel to have this much control over her, not this early. They had only just met a week ago, when he had sought her out, looking for work. She had a big exchange coming up, outside the city; she needed some extra muscle for a day or two. She didn’t trust Bettencourt and his scavengers. They were all half-crazy from being outside the walls for too long. More guns were always good to have when dealing with him and his crew. That’s all it was. Nothing long term about the job, and she made that explicitly clear. He didn’t care. He needed work however he could get it. But the deal had gone bad today; there had been a trap, a big firefight. One she almost lost… until he came roaring out of the smoke and the dust of the booby-trap that had killed three of her guys, a suitably massive pump shotgun in his hands, killing everyone who might try to harm her. She was almost certain that she would have cashed in her ticket, cut off from her team, crouched behind an old Ford Taurus, its rusting metal body baking in the hot summer sun of that junkyard, if it weren’t for the quiet new hire from Texas, the one who never said much but saw everything.

It’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it? She dug her heels hard into his firm ass and smiled.

She had felt an attraction to him the first time they’d met, in the hallway outside her secret office on the South End, when he had come to her looking for work, an out-of-towner with no reputation but big arms and hard eyes. There was a mild attraction there, no doubt about it. But she knew plenty of guys who were just as big, looked just as tough. But after what he did today… after he had come running to her rescue… after he had killed everyone standing between him and her… after he reached out to take her hand, to help her up, while the double-crossing Bettencourt lay dead at her feet, an entire magazine of her bullets resting in his belly… after he had smiled so charmingly as she let herself take his big, strong hand… after the way he looked at her as she let him pull her up to her feet… after seeing that she and he were the only two survivors, holding all the loot that both parties had brought to this busted deal… after all that…Could anyone blame her for wanting to have her cake and eat it too?

“Don’t hold back. Show me what you got, Texas,” she cooed admiringly, her arms exploring his broad back, his powerful shoulders, feeling the strength in him.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He picked up the pace a bit, deepened his thrusts. He bottomed out, bumping against the entrance to her cervix. She squealed softly, trying to muffle it into the side of his neck. He adjusted quickly, considerately, making sure not to do that again.

“And if you come inside me, I’m going to cut your balls off. Understand?”

He chuckled.

“Not even joking, Texas. I’ll cut them off and mount that big sack of yours on the wall over my desk. I’ll have special plaque made and everything. It’ll be in the shape of Texas, I swear.”

“Aw, Tess, you’d miss ‘em too much to ever do that to me,” he snorted dismissively, kissing the tip of her nose playfully. “Fact is, you like ‘em right where they are.”

Damn this man and his reckless confidence! It was lucky for him that she was finding all sorts of uses for him lately, otherwise…

She brought their lips together in a kiss. Her tongue fought him for dominance even as she surrendered the rest of herself to him. It felt so damn good.

He watched her large pillowy breasts sway back and forth, mesmerized in that way men often are. She noticed and gathered them with her hands, pressing them together, offering them up to him. He marveled at the sight of her ample cleavage and lowered his head, nuzzling his beard against the warm jiggling flesh, teasing her sensitive skin with his whiskers. She felt his hot breath on her hard nipples, tantalizing her, and she sighed contentedly.

“Next time around, maybe I’ll let you fuck these… maybe instead of a blowjob?” she whispered with a smoldering indecency. “What do you think?”

“Fuck…” he grunted, grinning lewdly, struggling with such a monumental decision, even as he kept a pleasing pace. “Do I have to choose? Can’t it be both?”

“Greedy bastard!” she mocked, letting her breasts slide away freely, reaching up to place her hands on his face, bringing him in close to kiss her again.

Their tongues sought each other out. He groaned as she pulled him deeper into her with her crossed ankles. He didn’t know it yet, but she had decided that she would be magnanimous and let him have both treats next time around. So long as he behaved himself, of course. Employees had to know their place in her organization. Chain of command was important if you wanted to keep things running smoothly. She wrapped her arms around him too, letting him know exactly where his place was. She wanted to keep this one around.

He shifted his weight on his arms a bit, letting her pull him down into an embrace, until they were pressed together. He was careful to keep as much of his weight off her as possible, not realizing that she wanted to feel him pressing down on her more than he was. Their sweat mingled together, coating them in a shared slickness.

“Come on, Joel. Don’t treat me like I’m some damn little girl. I’m not fragile,” she husked, her short nails scratching a trail across his broad back. “Put your back into it, big man.”

He did.

“Fuuuuuck. Just like that,” she purred into his ear, giggling just a little. “God, you’re the best hire I ever made, Joel. You know that?”

He grunted appreciatively and shifted a little higher in the saddle, placing wonderful pressure on the most sensitive part of her with each smooth thrust. She reached up with one arm, cradling his head against hers, delighting in the feeling of him moving in her, rocking them together in the rhythm he made for her.

“Oh, God. Don’t stop, Joel.” Her voice sounded breathless to her own ears. She shuddered, feeling the first tiny tremors of a hot, pulsating wave beginning to build deep inside her. She was very close now. Just another minute or so. “Don’t stop.”

“You treat all your hired guns this nicely, Miss Tess?” he teased, breathing a little faster than before.

She slapped his face, only half-playful. She had been so close, only to lose the moment because of some pigheaded remark. “Don’t even joke about that, you ass.”

He smiled that sexy lopsided smile of his and began corkscrewing in and out skillfully, varying the timing and speed of his thrusts. The new sensation sent an exciting thrill rushing though her and she quickly forgave him for the bad joke. She had to. His kind never apologized for anything.

He kissed her and she received his mouth ardently. His breaths were coming faster now, but still controlled. She sighed passionately, her lips brushing against his rough cheek. His hands slid under her back, embracing her completely, pulling her up to him easily as he sat back on his heels. He was so damn strong, she was almost afraid of him. Almost.

“Damn. Is this how they do it down in Texas?” Her voice was rising in pitch, catching in places. She clung to him. She could feel the sweet urgency rising again inside her. It wouldn’t be long now.

Her hands clung to his slippery back, straddling him, her legs wrapped around his body, practically sitting in his lap now. They were both sweating, skin shining in the moonlight that peeped in from the bedroom window of the old, abandoned mobile home on the outskirts of Natick, a small town a few miles outside of Boston. She had thought getting trapped this far outside of Boston when darkness fell was going to make for a long night. She had been right, but in the wrong ways. This was the good kind of sleepless night.

“We do it all sorts of interestin’ ways in back home in Texas, darlin’,” he drawled, his voice still strong and steady, dropping G’s all over the place, as he often did. “Figure I’m gonna show you a little somethin’ about that tonight, girl.”

She hated being called ‘girl’. She kissed him and bit his lower lip, tugging it with her teeth defiantly to remind him of who he worked for. He groaned. She smiled.

She was barely a teenager when the pandemic hit, only a month after she’d officially left the tender age of twelve behind. The years after had been hard, but her dad and uncle taught her to be tough. She managed to survive, no matter what. She was almost twenty-six now, the first days of the outbreak were more than a dozen years in the past. The world had to learn the hard way to take her seriously, despite her youth. She had a way about her that told people that she wouldn’t quit. No matter what.

This man was the same way. Tough. Strong. Resilient. At forty-one, he was sixteen years older than her, and almost the same age as her uncle was when he died buying her time to escape a stalker a few years into the pandemic. She missed him terribly but now was not the time to think about family. Especially since she was running the risk of starting one by bringing this irresistible jackass of man into her bed when she really ought to be planning their trip north tomorrow, to the outskirts of Lincoln, to introduce him to Bill. God, how many months since she had last shared her body with a man? Nine? Ten? How many days since her last period? Ten? Twelve? She tried to count, couldn’t focus, didn’t care.

She was definitely going to give this man a larger cut of the haul than she would normally give a short-term hire. She was certain of it. He had earned it. Didn’t cut and run when the shit hit the fan. Cool under fire. When the bullets started running low, she watched him beat a man to death with the hubcap he pried off an old Chevy with his bare hands, almost decapitating the unfortunate bastard. He saved her life when Bettencourt’s men cornered her. Knew his way around the world outside the walls of a quarantine zone. Found them a nice place to bed down for the night. Now here he was, screwing her brains out like a man who knew what the hell to do with a willing woman. No doubt about it. This man was going places in her crew.

She put her mind back on the task at hand, made easier by the masterful way in which he was taking her. She had hoped that breaking out her hip flask and getting him a little liquored up would pay off and it had. This laconic man from Texas did not disappoint. He was nuzzling her neck, kissing her tenderly, whispering dirty words softly through gritted teeth, slamming into her hard, increasing the pace again. Thrusting faster now, but still with a wonderful variation to it that kept her from feeling like she was on the receiving end of a dull jackhammer. It was exhilarating. Her large breasts ground against his hard, wooly chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close to her. She could feel herself being swept away by him. This was going places that she never intended. She wanted him in ways she didn’t want to think about. She closed her eyes, riding the wave of him, trying not to think about where this might lead. Trying only to think about this moment. Her head drifted back, trying to nuzzle his check. She wanted to feel his beard against her face. He kissed her eyelids. She melted.

“Keep... this up… and I’m… definitely… keeping you… around… full time,” she grunted, her words beginning to fail her again, his hot breath panting in her ear, stealing her thoughts away. She was on the verge of a powerful climax, aching and ready for release. She fervently hoped he wouldn’t say anything stupid and ruin the moment again.

“Boss, I can keep this up _all night_ ,” he growled, his voice gravelly and confident.

It was all she needed to slip over the edge.

 

* * *

 

From her bed across from his, Ellie watched Joel sleep. She had opened the curtains a while ago, and now the early morning glow was turning into the brighter light of day. It wasn’t like Joel to sleep in this late, but he had looked so tired the night before. She didn’t have the heart to wake him.

When he finally did wake up, he might be grouchy at her for letting him sleep in, but she was hoping the opposite would be true. Maybe a rest would do him some good. Yesterday, he had been so short tempered and prickly about everything. She had even tried to cheer him up by reading him a few good puns after bedtime last night. And he had told her to shut off the water lamp or he was going to stick it where the sun didn’t shine. While she had fumbled around for the ‘off’ switch, he had thrown a pillow at her!

The man was too surly to even enjoy a good midnight pun session! Incredible! How was such a thing even possible?

_And I even told him the one I thought he would really like. The one I’d been saving for days._

_‘Don’t read a boring book while lying on a nude beach or you might wake up and find you’re well red.’_

_That one’s priceless!_

She was determined to let him snooze. Maybe he wouldn’t be so damn grumpy when he woke up.

_He looks almost sweet when he’s asleep. And half the lines in his face disappear too._

He was tangled up in his sheets, halfway between sleeping on his stomach and sleeping on his side, facing in her direction. One arm was drawn up, blocking out the light. The other was gripping the pillow beneath his head. His other pillow was now part of the trio of pillows on her bed. She had kept it after he threw it at her. Served him right.

He mumbled again. He had been mumbling on and off for a few minutes now.

Her attention returned to issue ten of Savage Starlight. The valiant crew of the Von Neumann was attempting to use Daniela’s prototype phase-shift device to sneak close to the Traveler’s home world. So far so good. But the ship was more than halfway across the galaxy now. That was a long way from Earth and the crew was becoming homesick.

_I know how they feel. Who knew I’d ever miss Boston. All I ever wanted to do was get the fuck away from that place. Now, I’d love to be back in my old dorm room for just one night. Just one. Look out the window at the electric lights. Get a hot meal down in the cafeteria. Take a lukewarm shower with the other girls. Kill a little time in the gym. See if I could find anyone to play a little basketball with, maybe. I’d love to play some hoops again._

_God, I’d give anything to get that photo of me and Riley, the one she took with that camera she borrowed from Melody. It’s probably in the trash by now. Like all the rest of my stuff. Gone. Like I was never there. Like I never mattered to anyone at that school. I guess I didn’t, not really. Not to anybody but her, anyway._

_I’d love to talk to Riley again._

_Riley…_

Joel’s head suddenly jerked, one arm falling to rest on the edge of the mattress. Ellie’s eyes darted up to him in concern.

_I wonder what he’s dreaming about? I hope it’s not a bad dream._

“Tess…” he mumbled.

_Oh. It is a bad dream. Damn. I hate them too, Joel. I wish there was something I could do for you._

“Again…“ He smirked in his sleep. His voice sounded very caring, very warm. But there was something more. She couldn’t place it. She had never heard this particular quality in his voice before. “Mmmm…”

_Hey! Maybe it’s a good dream._

He groaned softly, smiled. “C’mere, girl…”

Ellie’s eyes widened as she realized just how good of a dream Joel was having. She had dreams like this sometimes and they were anybody’s business but hers. She had to respect Joel’s privacy. She returned to her comic and read the same page five times with absolutely no comprehension whatsoever.

Across from her, Joel rolled over onto his back with a satisfied grunt. Her eyes grew even wider. She tried very hard not to look. At him. At the sheet. At the upthrust shape outlined beneath it.

_Just read your damn comic book, Ellie. Don’t look._

A long moment.

_Why aren’t you reading your comic book, Ellie! Stop looking at it!_

A longer moment.

_The comic book is down here, Ellie. Down here in your hands!_

A bird sang outside the window. The comic pages went unturned.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? I promised you a sex scene and I delivered one. Maybe it didn’t feature Ellie, sure, but it did allow me to bring Tess into the story. And that’s worth putting up with a little “switcheroo” right? ;-)
> 
> The flashback to Tess was a lot of fun to write, as she is my favorite NPC in the game. I know she had to leave the story for dramatic purposes, but I loved the playful banter between her and Joel. There were moments of bitterness too, even early on, with her. She and Joel must have had quite a past together. This was my attempt to fill in some of those blanks. Look for Tess to make another appearance one of these days. Riley too.
> 
> See you in a few days when Ellie gets bored and Joel sleeps it off in Chapter Eight: Upstairs.


	8. Upstairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel sleeps in and Ellie tries to come to grips with how she acted while drunk the night before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the rising drama and action that culminated in a sizzling sex scene over the course of the last few chapters, it’s time to slow things down a bit and let the story breathe for a while before ramping up the action again a few chapters from now. So until then, here’s a quiet little arc that will focus on Ellie struggling with the guilt-driven need to act mature and responsible while still being a risk-taking kid at heart. I hope you enjoy it.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 08 – Upstairs**

 

Ellie studied the note that Joel had read yesterday. The one that had been lying on the little table between the beds. The one he had tossed away in frustration when she had teased him about his love of peaches. The one that had been held down by those wonderful bottles of fruity coolers.

_Oh my sweet fuck, those things were amazing._

     T

     Sheila let me in. Found these. Remember how much you  
     liked the last ones? Hope you enjoy. Found something else  
     you might like to. Drop by if your curious. 112 is always  
     open. Ready to make it up to you sweetie.

     E

The handwriting was probably a man’s, judging by the blocky, unattractive lettering. The penmanship was pretty lousy and there were a few typos, but the words on the page told her that there was clearly a mystery to be solved here. A mystery that possibly involved more of those yummy, fruity coolers.

_Those propaganda movies they made us watch all the time were absolutely right. I didn’t stay away from mind-altering substances, and now I’m hopelessly addicted. Fuck, I should have paid more attention during those movies. Now I’m doomed to a life of prostitution, venereal disease, and incarceration, just like they said would happen!_

She laughed softly under her breath. Joel was still sound asleep, but thankfully not having another one of ‘those’ dreams.

_Gonna be really hard to look at you the same way again, old man._

Her hand went to her mouth to stifle a giggle. She choked it down.

_‘Really hard’. Ha! I should start writing my own pun book!_

She folded the note and tucked it away in her backpack. There would be time to check out room 112 later. In the meantime, she decided to explore all the tantalizing things in this room that she hadn’t been able to look at last night.

_God, it’s lucky we even managed to get dinner in before it got dark... Before I got drunk._

She groaned, deeply abashed, and shook her head ruefully. Her loose hair hid her face.

_I really made an ass out of myself last night, bouncing off the fucking walls like that. Joel is never going to look at me the same way either. Fuck, I was such a little idiot. Good job, Ellie._

_God, it’s all such a blur._

_Let’s see… I remember… nibbling the corner of that bar of soap because I wanted to see if it tasted as good as it smelled._

_It did not._

Her eyes widened as the memory came back to her.

_Shit! I gotta hide that soap. Joel can’t ever find out I did that. If he sees the toothmarks…_

Dashing to the bathroom as quietly as she could, she found the little, half-unwrapped bar of Apricot Nectar soap sitting on the edge of the sink where she had left it the night before and pocketed it. She sucked on her lower lip as she continued to sift through the fuzzy memories of the night before. Her cheeks reddened as more of it came back to her.

_Oh God. I asked him to read me a bedtime story, didn’t I?_

She closed her eyes tightly, not wanting to think about the rest.

_I can’t believe I almost kissed him too, right after I asked him for a story, just to see what he would do. His face was just right there. I almost couldn’t help myself! Fuck! That’s the sort of crazy shit Riley would have done._

She groaned, placed her hands over her face, hiding red cheeks from sleeping eyes. She was glad she hadn’t put her hair up in a ponytail yet. It made for a nice curtain to hide behind.

_Oh, God. I’m never going to live this down._

She looked up at the ceiling for a moment then looked at her sleeping friend. She smiled, blushed, her thoughts a roiling mix of shame and thrills, and hid her eyes from him again.

_That’s right! I almost crawled into bed with him too. I think the plan was to surprise him when he woke up today. I was going to say something like ‘Oh, Joel! That was amazing! I’m finally a woman now!’ or something along those lines. Try to convince him that he’d seduced me while he was drunk and now he’d never be able to get rid of me. He wouldn’t have a choice. He’d have to let me stick around after something like that!_

“Oh, Ellie… what the hell were you thinking…” she whispered to the ceiling. A moment later, more of it came back to her and she groaned softly. “Ohhhh noooo….”

_Oh no. I think I was going to take off my clothes too, and try to get his sweatpants off before he woke up. That way he’d think for sure he’d banged me._

_Jeez. That plan made a lot more sense when I was drunk. Once I’d made sure he was in a good mood from all the puns and sound asleep, I was going to snuggle under the covers with him._

She groaned again, hanging her head as it came back to her. She covered her face with her hands and smiled.

_Thank God he threw that pillow at me and then I fell asleep waiting for the right time to sneak over to him and try again. He’s not exactly the sort of who enjoys a practical joke. And that was probably a step too far, even if he could take a joke._

_With any luck, he’ll let this go and not embarrass me with it. Fuck, he’ll probably be just as happy if I never bring it up again either._

Pulling her hair out of her face, doing her best not to think her booze-filled antics, she sat down and began to dig through the luggage of the woman who had once inhabited this room.

Much of what was in the bags was what exactly the sort of thing the girl expected to find: socks, underwear, slacks (the dressy sort, not sturdy enough to be of much use in a world like this), a few fancy but lightweight blouses. None of the panties were quite her style —too lacy and sheer, for the most part. And all of the bras were a little too generous in the cup size for her to make good use of. All in all, Ellie was nonplussed by most of what she found. But a few items stood out.

First and foremost, a pair of red high-heeled shoes. She found them fascinating for some reason. Little dainty straps were all that held your foot in place and the spike heel was at least five inches high. How on earth would you run from clickers in something like this? How would you even manage something as simple as stairs? She drew her leg close to her and slipped the shoe on. It wasn’t a bad fit. This woman must have been pretty petite. She admired the impractical shoe; her foot had never known anything remotely like it. Even seated on the floor, Ellie could tell right away that trying to stand up would surely end in disaster.

_How the fuck would you even walk around in these? Wouldn’t your ankles snap in half the minute you tried to move? Twenty years ago, were the streets of the world just littered with women lying around with broken ankles? Did people step over them? They must have! You couldn’t possibly save them all, could you?_

She giggled at the mental image she was conjuring up for her own amusement. While she did so, she idly shifted her weight to the other hip, reached down and slipped her bare foot into the remaining shoe. That done, she buckled the thin straps around her ankles and stretched out her legs. She grinned broadly, admiring the look and feel of them.

_I feel like Dorothy, in The Wizard of Oz. Only, you know, sexier and much, much slower… or something… I guess._

She wiggled each exposed toe. She leaned back and lifted her legs into the air, one at a time, turning her ankles this way and that, pleased by the novelty of it all. It felt weird to keep her feet pointed down so sharply, but as long as she didn’t actually have to walk in these, it wasn’t so bad. She couldn’t explain why she liked the way they looked on her feet, but she knew for certain that she couldn’t justify the space they would take up in her backpack. Reluctantly, she put them back in the pile of discarded items.

She next stumbled upon a small tube of pink ‘Lacy Rose’ lipstick. This would have been worth a small fortune back in the orphanage. The upper class girls had been know to make some amazing trades just to secure half a stick of this waxy junk. She toyed with the idea of trying a little on, but decided to play it safe. She already had enough to answer for when Joel woke up. He didn’t need to scold her while she was sporting a fresh coat of ‘Lacy Rose’. It would not go well for her if she did. Nevertheless, she held onto it, but only as a curiosity. The eye shadow and blush she found next would just be more of the same headache, so she tossed them onto the discard pile as well.

Putting the various other cosmetics back, she discovered a single sheer stocking. Joel had used one of these to make the water lantern, so this must be its mate. She held it up, seeing how the light shined through it diffusely, enchanted by the sheerness of the fabric, amazed that something so delicate could have survived twenty years in this world intact. She pressed it flat against her arm, seeing how it changed the color of her flesh, making her fair skin appear more dusky, more exotic. She appreciated the effect, but wasn’t exactly sure why men would find this sexy though. When you got your man alone, wouldn’t he just want to take it off right away? What would be the point of putting it on in the first place, exactly?

She rooted around and found a small Zippo lighter, very similar to the battered, dull brass one that Joel carried. This one, however, was a bright metallic pink. There was a cartoon cat on the front with a pure white face, a little bow on one ear, and big, adorable eyes. On the flip side, the words ‘Hello Kitty’ appeared in the same chip-resistant enamel that comprised the cat’s face. Ellie flipped the hinged lid open and thumbed the little wheel. A flame sprouted up on command.

”You are so fuckin’ _cute_ ,” she whispered to it, grinning with delight. She closed the lid and slipped it into her pocket. This was a keeper.

Inside one of the smaller pouches, she found a small box of baking soda sealed in a Ziploc sandwich bag. She kept this as well. Now she wouldn’t need to borrow Joel’s every time she brushed her teeth.

In the shoulder tote behind the larger suitcase, she found a three-color windbreaker. The thickly striped pink, white, and black design instantly appealed to her. She tossed it on her backpack as well. Later, sometime in the days yet to come, when she puts it on during a particularly cool autumn morning, Joel, seeing it for the first time, will tell her she looks like an ice cream sandwich. She will ask him what that is, and, when told, she will be deeply skeptical that such a wondrous treat ever really existed.

In the larger, zippered compartment of the tote, she found a little leather holster with a revolver. She took the gun out and studied it carefully. It had a very short barrel, two inches or thereabouts, and a weird shroud running along the sides of the frame, protecting the hammer from snagging on anything. The words stamped on the side of the frame identified this as an ‘.38 Smith & Wesson Airweight’. The entire gun was very compact and incredibly light. She wondered if it was made out of aluminum or something. She tossed it on her backpack too.

_Maybe I’ll give this to Joel to make up for being such a little brat last night._

There was a mostly full box of ammunition for it. She slid the plastic tray out of the cardboard box and counted each bullet. Forty-three in all. She had never seen so many bullets in one place. The box sailed through the air to join the revolver, landing with a heavy thump on the mattress.

She dug through the last few items in the bag, pulled a very nice skirt out. Ellie had never worn a skirt in her life. She studied it hard, trying to figure out why anyone would want to wear a tube of fabric around their hips when pants made so much more sense.

She carried it over to the long mirror on the bathroom door. After a moment’s consideration, she draped it across her hips. The woman who once owned this had hips not much bigger than hers. She took comfort from that fact.

_Could this be more impractical? How on earth could you climb a fence in this? Or slide down a roof? Or climb in through a broken window? I can’t believe girls actually wore this kind of silly stuff. How did they get anything done in stuff like this?_

She didn't put it down.

She turned this way and that, seeing how it looked on her hips. She looked back to make sure Joel was still sound asleep. Assured that he was, she unfastened her pants and shimmied them down to her ankles. She wanted to see how this skirt looked against her bare legs.

_Don’t wake up… don’t wake up… don’t wake up…_

She held it just right, so that her underwear was completely hidden behind it, showing off her legs in a way that intrigued her. She almost put it on. Thought better of it. Pulled it away. Looked at it in her hands. Waited. Thought.

She pulled it taut across her hips again.

_Silly. Dumb._

She found that she was still holding it there. Still looking at herself in the mirror.

_Stupid._

_So why can't I put this dumb thing down?_

She posed, one bare leg tucked behind the other, making her legs look as shapely as possible. She had seen this pose in several magazine advertisements. She tried to twist and arch her back as much as she could, shrinking her waist and thrusting her small breasts out like those much more generously endowed women had done in the advertisements. She pushed her lips out a little, making them a bit plumper. She shook her head a bit, so that some of her hair fell over her left eye, hiding part of her face in what she hoped was a sultry fashion.

_Why did I have to be born now? Why couldn't I have seen that world? Why couldn't I have gone to the mall, wearing a stupid skirt? And dumb, dangerous shoes? And silly stockings? And lipstick! And eye shadow and all that shit! Just once in my life?_

She sighed softly, sadly. The skirt had stopped being fun. She tossed it back on top of the luggage. She decided that she was totally fucking done with the luggage and all the dumb crap stuffed inside it. She pulled her jeans up and zipped them closed.

_So fucking stupid._

She looked down at the pile of junk she had created from what had began as rather nicely packed set of luggage and for one crazy moment, thought about putting all back. But the moment passed, fortunately. She was ready to get dressed and start the day.

The clothing she had removed before bathing last night was draped over the shower curtain rod in the bathroom. She had been wearing it since she left Boston. As much as she loved that red t-shirt with the palm trees, she couldn’t bear the thought of it against her body. Not until it had been washed. Several times, preferably. She dug around in her backpack and found one of her few other shirts, a long-sleeved maroon and white t-shirt with a giant paw print on the front.

“Wish I had a dog. Always wanted one,” she whispered to no one in particular.

She hadn’t packed much in the way of clothes before she left the QZ, just the few items she was able to grab on her way out of the abandoned mall in Boston, where she and Riley had been bit. All the rest of her clothes were back in her dorm room. She could never go back there again. Could never get any of her things.

_Probably all in boxes by now, being passed out to new arrivals. They gotta think I’m dead or something by now. So, I guess it’s not my stuff anymore._

There wasn’t much room in her backpack for stuff anyway. She peered into it, thinking about the size of it, how small it was, how it contained her entire world now.

_I always kept my most important things in here. My Walkman. The letter from my mom. Any candy I had. Kept them in here in case I had to leave in a hurry. Sooner or later, I always had to leave. Sometimes I didn’t even get much warning. But I never expected to actually live out of this thing._

_I feel like some sort of straggler. I miss my crappy dorm room with the little dresser with all its drawers full of clothes. I miss my big stack of CDs and tapes. I miss all my magazines. I miss that cardboard box full of old paperbacks and comics. I miss that stupid little plastic flower Riley put in the windowsill, the one with the silly yellow smiley face and the dusty white petals that I always meant to clean but never did. The one that looked sort of like Bonnie’s pet flower, the one she kept hidden up on the roof._

_Most of all, I miss having more than two fucking sets of socks and underwear._

She tugged on a wayward bra strap, knowing that she was wearing the cleanest set she had but still wishing she had something new to wear. The other set had been hand washed last night and spread out on a towel under her bed to dry. Joel might insist they didn’t have enough water to do laundry, but she would be damned if she was going to put on crusty socks or undies again. She toyed with the notion of just not wearing a bra today.

Her shirt, socks, and panties laid out and ready on the bed, she reached down to gather them up, take them into the bathroom and change. She paused, looked over her shoulder at Joel, who was facing the wall and still snoring softly.

Her heart raced with a sudden notion. She wondered if she had the courage.

_No fucking way. Don’t be stupid, Ellie._

_But stupid is fun._

Moments later, she had completed the fastest quick change of her life. She tucked in her shirt, grinning like a madwoman, pulsing with energy. She was almost vibrating with excitement. She let the small black sports bra dangle from her finger. He probably wouldn’t even notice she wasn’t wearing one anyway.

_Why the fuck did I do that with him right over there? What if he’d rolled over? Woke up? Why the fuck did I do that? What if he’d seen me while I was changing my panties? Why the fuck am I not wearing a bra? I always wear one! Why did I do this?_

_Because it was fun. Why else do you ever do anything, Ellie?_

_Yeah, well, I can’t do shit like that anymore. I’ve got a chance to make a real friend out of this guy. Someone who will let me stick around. Someone who might miss me. Want me around. Someone to be… not family, I guess. But something. _

_I have to behave. Be a good girl for once in my life. I have to try._

She pulled on the clean socks she had washed the night before, laced up her shoes. The morning was wearing on. It had to be eight or nine o’clock by now. She tucked her pistol inside the waistband of her jeans, slipped the switchblade into her back pocket. Her tank top and underwear she rolled up tightly and stuffed into her backpack, putting them on top of her old blanket and her new windbreaker. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail while she watched him sleeping soundly. She smiled.

_I think he needs a friend. Fuck, I know I do. Maybe we can be friends. Real friends. Why not?_

She rubbed the bite mark on her arm through the sleeve of her shirt.

_Stranger things have happened, right?_

On a whim, she made the bed very neatly and then plopped down on it, excited and anxious to see where this day would take them. Together.

She sat. Waited for Joel to wake up. Kicked her legs a little. Bored. She was ready for breakfast any time now. She took a deep breath and made herself sit still.

_Just be patient, Ellie. A good girl is patient. Be good. Be good for him, okay? _

_It won’t kill you. Be patient._

 

* * *

 

“Joel. Wake the fuck up, dude.”

Small hands shook him. He barely stirred.

“…Tess…zat you?”

_Awkward._

”No. It’s not Tess. It’s me.”

“Sonya… G’back… t’sleep…”

_Even more awkward._

“Who the fuck is Sonya?” she whispered, knowing she would never get an answer.

He was snoring loudly again. He settled deeper into his pillow.

_Fuck this. What does he expect me to do? Wait around until he catches up on all his old man sleep? He’s older than dirt. I could be waiting for days! Years!_

“Damn it, Joel,” she whispered. “I tried being good. I really did. But you just wouldn’t fucking let me, would you?”

She tousled his short hair affectionately, unsure what prompted the gesture.

_He’s kind of cute when he’s asleep._

“Fine. Sleep in all you want,” she said, no longer trying to be quiet. “Enjoy your nap, old man.”

She had opened the curtains a crack earlier. Now she closed them again, to hide him safely in here from any eyes that might pass by. She left the little tin of Anacin on the table by his revolver, in case he woke up with a headache. She’d had a pretty mild one herself when she’d first opened her eyes. She suspected it was the alcohol, but didn’t have enough experience in these matters to say for sure.

Without the assortment of luggage piled on the seat, the chair that Joel had blocked the door with was easily and quietly inched away, making just enough of a gap for her to slip out. She had to get out of this room, but couldn’t remember exactly where it was she should go.

She took the note from her backpack and unfolded it, skimmed it again.

“That’s right. Room 112.”

She flipped the note over, took out the tube of lipstick and scrawled across the blank paper in broad, loopy, pink strokes ‘Room 112.’ She quickly added a big smiley face. Grinning, she drew a playful tongue sticking out to the side of the goofy mouth to give it that special Ellie touch that it needed so much. She left the paper under his revolver, the lipstick lying next to it.

“Back soon,” she whispered into his ear and kissed his cheek softly, her lips trembling, just a little. She blushed, even though there was no one to see it. She bit lightly at her lower lip, a pleasantly warm shiver running through her, impressed by her own bravery.

_If he ever found out that I just did that, he’d fucking kill me. I just know it._

She wasn’t sure why she had kissed him, but it was okay now because she was sober and he was sound asleep. And maybe he needed a kiss. Anything was possible, right?

Still smiling from the thrill of the stolen kiss, she shouldered her backpack, grabbed the janitor’s keys from the nightstand, scooped up her shotgun from the floor, and left the room, stepping out into the bright rays of day, making sure he was safely locked inside.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The opportunity to let Ellie play dress up was too good to pass up. Plus, to her eyes, the fashions of our time must seem truly bizarre and impractical, yet intriguing in their own strange way.
> 
> Also, big thanks to my GF, Michelle, for helping me hammer both this chapter and the next one into shape. Her input was invaluable. When we were playing the game with her brother, when Ellie reads the girl’s diary in the ranch house, Michelle said that Ellie resented those girls not just for being vapid and shallow (like her brother and I assumed), but for having such a life of ease, one that she would never know. It wasn’t how I initially interpreted Ellie’s comments at all. But the longer I thought about it, the more it made sense to me. Ellie loves the past, but she sort of resents it a little too, because it hints to her about a world that has been lost, one she will never see. And thus chapters 8 and 9 were born.
> 
> Lastly, surely it doesn’t need to be said that you should never mix booze and painkillers, right? Good thing that Joel’s so tough.
> 
> Hope to see you back here on Saturday when Ellie, after a long stretch of being good, reverts to her old ways and sneaks out, breaking the rules for her own enjoyment in Chapter Nine: Downstairs.


	9. Downstairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having exhausted the possibilities offered by Room 205, Ellie follows the clues she found in a mysterious note, leading her down to Room 112. Joel, meanwhile, continues to sleep in, still held in the grip of the booze and painkillers.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 09 – Downstairs**

 

Room 112 was on the ground floor, around back, near the little rear parking lot with the dumpster, according to the ‘You Are Here’ sign posted by the empty, forlorn ice machine.

_Wouldn’t mind some ice. Bet it’s gonna get warm today._

She crept across the walkway of the second story, stepping gingerly over the body of the thing that had once been Sheila, assuming the nametag on the shirt was accurate. The red Honda was still where they had left it. The dead infected still lay where they had fallen the evening before. No new ones had found their way into the parking lot but a few could be seen across the street, convulsing their way aimlessly around in search of prey.

She stayed as low to the concrete floor as she could, sneaking her way around to the back of the Motel 6, where the rear staircase was. She padded down it silently, pausing at the bottom to look around carefully, shotgun ready. Nothing back here. The coast was clear. She inched her way to the overstuffed dumpster, making sure that nothing had taken up residence since she and Joel had checked it the evening before. Nothing was here either, except the garbage and the stink.

A cool, gentle breeze was blowing back here. She could feel it reaching for her through her shirt, reminding her that she had chosen to go without a bra today. She grinned, feeling as though she were somehow breaking a rule. One of his rules. An unspoken one. The easiest ones to break. It felt great to be a rebel again.

Moving slowly, her eyes darting about warily, she made her way from the bottom of the stairs, across the concrete sidewalk, to room 112. The window to the room had been shattered, glass lay on the sidewalk. Given the location of the shards, she surmised that it had been broken from the inside. Staying low, she peered over the edge of the windowsill, daring a look inside. The room was heavy with shadows, being on the west side, away from the morning sun. But there was no one inside, not that she could see anyway.

Ellie reached up to climb through the window but the keys pressing against her leg from inside her pocket reminded her that she didn’t need to break in for once.

The key stamped ‘112’ slid easily into the lock and she slipped inside the room.

 

* * *

 

“Ellie… Get breakfast... started… We gotta… hit the road soon…”

He didn’t open his eyes, just rolled over and slipped deeper into the dangerous grip of the booze and the pills.

It was almost nine in the morning now.

 

* * *

 

Underneath the bed, resting against the edge of the baseboard, was a very dusty can of Wild Cherry Pepsi. Ellie reached, strained, grunted, felt her fingertips brush against it.

“Come… on… you fucker…”

_Don’t make me resort to using tools! Or the Force! Now come here!_

She pulled it to her with soft, joyous squeak of victory. This was going into her backpack next to her prized can of crushed pineapple.

She looked around the room, curious what else there was to find.

The window had been broken out by gunfire coming from inside the room. Empty brass pistol cartridges were scattered around the carpet. A rainstorm had soaked the area around the window within the last few days. The carpet over there stank of mildew. The bed was messy, the sheets dirty. The luggage hadn’t yielded anything of interest. No wine coolers. Men’s clothing too big for her, too small for Joel. A plastic bottle of some green liquid something called ‘Scope’. It smelled delicious and was now in her pack next to the can of Pepsi. She couldn’t decide which one she wanted to drink first.

On the long countertop built into the wall, next to the dead TV, were stacks of canned food. She inventoried them carefully, looking for something Joel might enjoy. Sooner or later, he would have to wake up and she wanted to find a treat for him.

_Dinty Moore Beef Stew. Family sized. That looks good. Ooh! And sliced peaches! He’ll love these! Hey! Here’s another one! ‘Sliced peaches in light syrup with cinnamon and brown sugar’. Oh man! I’m going to be his favorite person ever when I come back with these!_

Into her backpack went the cans.

The bathroom had more soap and shampoo – she grabbed several of each, but no clean towels. However, there were a few plastic boxes, the kind the older people at the orphanage always called ‘milk crates’, each filled with three or four gallon jugs of clean water. More than a dozen gallons in all. She made a mental note to tell Joel about them whenever he hauled his lazy ass out of bed. With any luck, they could do laundry today. Their dirty clothes needed to be washed sooner or later, right?

With nimble fingers, she pulled open the drawers in the little dresser built into the wall over by the bathroom door and began to rifle through it. Shirts, pants, underwear. Lots of clothing. Man, this guy had been living in this room for a long time, before whatever happened here left the motel empty and abandoned.

The bottom drawer slid open, revealing old magazines and newspapers.

_Jackpot!_

“USA Today… Wall Street Journal… Car and Driver…People…” She read the titles of each publication as she flipped through the stack. “Fuckin’ sweet. I’m gonna read all of you guys-”

Her fingers paused in their work, her mind slipped a gear. She blinked. Twice.

“Playboy” she read, her voice suddenly very soft. “Entertainment For Men. September 2013.”

On the cover, a pretty blonde woman was lying on the grass, a pair of giant scissors in her hand. She wore red sneakers and a blue bikini top, which was untied and barely covering her breasts. She wore no bikini bottom. The only things keeping her privates concealed were her carefully positioned legs.

“’Splendor in the grass’,” she read, the words barely audible, “’A Naked Guide To Lawn Sports.’”

She giggled breathlessly, almost hiccuping in joy.

_Oh man… I hope Joel doesn’t wake up for a while._

She flipped the book open to the middle. It had a funny, folded page there, just like the dirty magazine she had swiped from Bill’s secret stash of amazing stuff. It had been a very educational read, filled with many very interesting pictures. She hoped this one would be too.

With a gentle shake, the long page unfolded, and Ellie drank in the beauty of the dusky, exotic, small-breasted goddess on display before her lustful green eyes.

“Bryiana Noelle… September’s Playmate of the Month.” This was a definition of the word ‘playmate’ that she was not familiar with. “God, look at how awesome her hair is… And… where the hell is the rest of her… hair… Did she… shave it off… or something?”

_Is that what they used to do?_

She knew that a few of the older girls at the school did it sometimes. She had seen proof of it in the showers. Riley said they did it because their boyfriends wanted them to. Seemed like a lot of work, if you asked her. Riley agreed, said it was dumb to let a boy boss you around like that. But Riley had tried it herself a few months later, when she got serious about that boy, Montego… before he broke her heart by getting a blowjob from Cherry Jackson in the alley behind the mess hall.

_Why would you do that? Shave it all off for a boy? Why would they want you to? Who cares! Look at that swimming pool! I wish I had a big red chair like that. I’d sit beside her all day and get the worst sunburn of my life! She could teach me how to swim in that pool. Or show me how to walk in those heels. Or how to get my hair to be half as awesome as hers._

Small, deft fingers flipped through the pages quickly, sampling what this magazine had to offer a dedicated scholar of the past such as herself. There were so many pictures! And words! And more pictures and more words! There was a fall style guide for men’s fashions, twenty questions with Bill Hader, a college football preview, an interview with somebody called Tony Robbins, a dozen naked women running around in a big field of grass, a naked blonde woman riding a super cool white horse on a beach, and an entire fact sheet filled with information about the dark-haired and gorgeous Bryiana.

“Born June 21, 1991… Salinas, California… 31-24-32.5… 5’3”, 85 pounds.”

She let that sink in for a moment.

“Hey!” she said suddenly, probably too loudly. “I’m 5’3”! There’s hope for me yet! But there’s no damn way she’s 85 pounds, not with curves like those. I weigh more than 85 pounds, and I’m starving to death half the fucking time.”

She clucked her tongue.

“You’re a little liar, Miss Noelle. A sexy, sexy little liar.”

She was also the last Playboy playmate ever; the last in a proud tradition that was snuffed out by the pandemic that hit the world just a few days after her issue hit the newsstands. But Ellie didn’t know that. Twenty years on now, things like that no longer mattered. No historians were around any more to keep records. Ellie liked to think that she was keeping the tradition alive, in some form at least.

“’I’m a huge beach freak and drive-in movie theater fan’,” Ellie read from the bio page on the back of the centerfold. “’Both are great make-out spots!’”

_Oh, Bryiana. I know a little about making out. Abandoned mall roofs are a great make-out spot too, FYI._

She was too turned on to let the bad memories associated with that still-recent morning reach her in any way. This was not going to be a day for that sort of thing. This day was all about living.

She flipped back a few pages, to the beginning of the article, and saw the beautiful woman draped sensuously across a white staircase, wearing nothing but a pair of black high heels. She licked her lips and blinked again. Her green eyes saw the headline of the article without really seeing it. It crept into her mind by osmosis.

“My God… ‘Stairway To Heaven’ is right…”

_Hit the snooze button, Joel. Hit it hard!_

 

* * *

 

“Tess… Trap… B’hind you…”

His fists balled up, tugging the fitted sheet away from the mattress, strangling the hunter in his mind the way he had strangled him in the tunnel years ago. He would get out of there with Tess at his side, her Ak-47 blazing a trail to freedom for them, but it would be a near thing. This particular fight always was.

The morning hour crept closer to ten.

 

* * *

 

The most awesome magazine ever was hidden away safely at the bottom of her bag, wrapped up in several innocuous looking newspapers, safely tucked under the toy robot she stole for Sam, where Joel must never find it. The backpack was secured to the shoulders of a girl dragging the chair over to the coat rack. She had noticed a small box up there, on the flat rack across the top.

“Come to momma,” she said, standing on the seat cushion of the chair, reaching out for the package with eager fingers.

The cardboard box wasn’t large, nor was it heavy, but something about it whispered to her, hinting at important mysteries hidden away inside. It held a story waiting to be told, she was sure of it, calling out to her to save it from an eternity of keeping a secret it desperately wished to share.

_Don’t worry, little guy. Ellie is here._

She dropped down into the seat with a carefree plop. The package was sealed with duct tape. That silvery stuff was on everything these days, it seemed. She turned it over several times, trying to decide which end to open.

_Decisions, decisions…Eenie, meenie, minie, moe…_

The tape parted easily to a skillful swipe of her switchblade.

_Tell me your secrets, magic box…Oh! What is this? _

A package of chocolate M&Ms. She’d had these before, when she was about eleven or so, when she was staying with a really nice foster family for a few months. She remembered them as very nice people. It was a happy place to stay, for a while, until the woman was killed in a Firefly bombing. She had worked as clerk for the military. Her death was ‘collateral damage’, she’d heard someone say. It was her idea to take in a foster kid. When she was gone, Ellie had to go to. She remembered the husband being very sad, the candy being awesomely delicious. It was his gift to her before he dropped her off at the children’s orphanage again.

Beneath the candy was a single bottle of cooler. She bounced in the seat excitedly. This one was piña colada flavored. She had no idea what kind of fruit that was, but she was certain it had to be delicious. Bartles & Jaymes hadn’t let her down yet.

Beneath the precious cooler, a note written on Motel 6 stationery. She unfolded it.

     Tala,

     Chocolate for the sweetest woman on Earth.  
     Can’t wait to see you in this nightie.

     Love you girl,  
     Enrique

_Nightie? What the hell is that? Like pajamas or something?_

Beneath the note, at the very bottom of the package, was a small, flimsy red bundle.

It seemed very delicate, so she lifted it up and shook it out it carefully.

It was a sheer, lacey, red shirt of some kind. She had never seen anything quite like it. The intricate lace pattern of the fabric was very pretty, an elaborate design of roses and stems, all tangled together in a way that made for a very feminine effect. But the material was so sheer, the spaces between the clusters of roses so large, that she could clearly see her blue jeans through the garment as she examined it.

It opened in the front; it didn’t slip on like a t-shirt. The entire thing was held closed by two little ribbon ties just beneath the breasts instead of a line of buttons or snaps.

_Only the one set of ties? How would you keep this thing closed? Your entire tummy would be exposed._

She turned it around in her hands, looking at it (and through it) from the back.

_Why the fuck would a woman would ever wear such a thing? And what do you wear under it? Or over it? Really, you’d need to do both at the same time. If a woman were gonna wear this thing, she’d need a hell of a lot of layers to stay warm._

She held it up towards the window, peered through the lace, watched the world going on outside the window.

_You can see right through the damn thing! Everyone would be able to see your bra!_

It took a second to dawn on her.

_Oh! You’re not supposed to wear a bra with this! Your boobs are supposed to just flop around inside it._

She grinned at the novelty of the almost entirely useless garment. It was good for only one thing! Sex! Back when people had all kinds of time for sex, back before it became something people did when they found a few, desperate minutes to connect with each other between the terrifying, boring, soul-crushing routine of daily survival.

_This is sexy! This is for sex! That’s all it’s good for!_

_Hell, I’m already not wearing a bra. Maybe I should give this thing a try._

She laughed, entranced by the wonderful frivolousness of the thing, toying with the notion of stripping her shirt off, trying on this crazy, boob-revealing top. But she decided it was too risky. This room wasn’t safe like room 205 was.

_Just my luck something would happen. A runner would show up or something and I’d have to run out of here wearing it. I’ve never met Tommy, but I sure don’t want to meet him wearing this._

But like the skirt earlier, she found she couldn’t put it down.

She ran her thumb over the garment, feeling the intricate pattern of the lace. Held it up against herself, looking at the intriguing ways in which the big dog paw print on her shirt appeared to her eyes, filtered through the screening layer of lace. Rubbed it lightly against her cheek, appreciating the softness of it.

_Maybe… If I’m super quick…_

She grinned, stood up, began to untuck her shirt, sliding it up. The cool air inside the room felt wonderful on her bare skin. Her nipples hardened instantly.

Footsteps outside the room, coming down the stairs!

She raised the pistol. The shotgun with its crude rope sling was too far away, still on the mattress across the room, where she’d left it when she crawled under the bed to get the Pepsi. She would berate herself for that slipup later. Her shirt was bunched up around her, across the top of her bare breasts, the cotton binding and twisting uncomfortably beneath her armpits, making it awkward to aim her compact Beretta. She kept the gun pointed at the window, took cover behind the chair, tried to pull her shirt down a bit.

A hissed, low voice from outside the door, just around the corner of the building.

“Ellie?”

“Joel?!” Nervous. Surprised. Caught!

_Oh, fuck! Joel!_

She yanked her top down, scrambled to stuff the nightie back into the box with one hand, tried to straighten her damn shirt with the other, kicked the box behind the chair.

_Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck! Please tell me he didn’t see anything!_

She was sitting casually in the chair, holding up the last issue of The Wall Street Journal ever printed – February 26, 2014, according to the date on the front page – when he peered in through the broken window. She crossed her legs in what she hoped was a perfectly nonchalant fashion.

“What _the fuck_ are you _doing_ in here?” He was keeping his voice low. There were infected in the nearby buildings.

“Umm… Reading about…how… ‘Asian Exporters Seeking To Shore Up Their Losses In Worsening Global Markets… China Declares ‘Shoot On Sight Curfew’ In Hong Kong To Contain Outbreak – Human Rights Groups Outraged’,” she skimmed the page, reading the words there. “You know. Keeping up on world events and shit.”

“Uh-huh.” He climbed through the window frame, sliding into the room easily, his large Mossberg shotgun cradled in his off hand. His boots squished in the wet carpet as he crossed the room to her.

“Did you know…” she began, as innocently as she could, skimming the page with quick eyes, “that ‘Detroit Riots Continue For Fifth Day In A Row’. ‘CBI pandemic now confirmed to be spreading into northern cities, FEMA scientists say.’”

“Yeah,” a quiet, bitter word. “I know all about that stuff, kid.”

“I don’t,” she said quietly, becoming genuinely absorbed in the article. The pictures were horrifyingly interesting. He waited a minute, letting her read. Maybe she really didn’t know much about the days of the outbreak.

“Ellie.” Stern. Firm. Unhappy.

“Hmm?” Trying to sound innocent but also genuinely distracted by this glimpse into a past she had always wanted to know more about.

“Why the fuck did you leave the room? What the hell are you doing wanderin’ around down here? _Alone_?” Unhappy and getting unhappier by the minute. But also something else… Relieved?

She looked up from the newspaper, trying her best to look like the wronged party here. “I _tried_ to wake you up, Joel. But you just lay there. You wouldn’t _get up_.”

_Well, one part of you was up. But I don’t feel like having nice words spoken over my grave today, so I’ll just keep that little… um… not so little secret to myself._

“Yeah. And you can bet _your ass_ that we’re gonna talk about _that shit_ in a minute. Get your stuff together, we’re going back to the room. I had to prop the damn door open because _somebody_ swiped the damn keys.”

She almost protested, but the tone of his voice made it plain that he wasn’t in the mood for anything but complete compliance.

“Come on, kid. It’s almost noon. Let’s get back to our room. _Now_.”

_He’s really pissed. At me? For coming down here alone? It seems like it’s more than that._

_What happened? Was it something I did? Oh, God. Please don’t tell me I fucked something up. I just wanted to poke around a little._

“Sure thing, Joel.”

She followed him out the window. She could have used the door, but he didn’t, so she didn’t either. What he did, she did.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Joel’s finally awake again and Ellie is not looking forward to hearing him scold her for sneaking off after drugging him, accidentally or not.
> 
> Somehow, The Wall Street Journal kept going for five months following the outbreak. As far as I’m concerned, this was the last American newspaper still being printed before civilization finally sputtered to a stop. Apocalypse or not, bankers and investors would need to know where the markets were at on a day to day basis, damn it! ;-)
> 
> Bryiana Noelle really is the playmate of the month for September, 2013, the month of the outbreak. She’s very hot and is worthy of the distinction of being the last playmate ever. I picked up that issue on eBay, strictly for the purposes of research. I must say the interview with Tony Robbins made for an interesting read. Great articles in that magazine.
> 
> Further, I might as well address this now. As I’m writing her, Ellie is on the bisexual curve of human sexual orientation, but one who leans much more towards preferring women to men. In fact, in the chapters to come, I plan to show that Ellie has pretty much been into women for as long as she’s had any sexual urges. That’s not to say that she hasn’t noticed the occasional cute boy here and there, but that’s not her usual preference – not until Joel came along, of course. I’ll address this more as the story goes on, but for the moment, consider this can of worms opened. Naughty Dog didn’t draw a hard line for her tastes, so this is my interpretation of that.
> 
> Sorry to all of you who hoped Ellie would try that little teddy on (it’s not a nightie, despite what Enrique thinks. Nighties are more like sexy little nightgowns). Gratuitous Ellie nudity just wasn’t in the cards today. Maybe next time. ;-)
> 
> The next installment will be along in a few days. See what happens as Joel and Ellie try to make peace in Chapter Ten: A Crowded Room.


	10. A Crowded Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie and Joel spend one last night in the Motel 6 before hitting the road. There’s candy, story time, and Joel teaches Ellie an important skill.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 10 – A Crowded Room**

 

His arms were crossed. She studied the little pill closely. His forehead was furrowed. Her eyebrows were raised.

“This _isn’t_ Anacin?” she asked.

“Don’t know what it is, to be honest. But it sure as hell ain’t Anacin. Now you promise me that you didn’t know what you were givin’ me last night?”

Her eyes flew open wide, shocked. She looked at him, worry and disbelief spreading across her features.

“No! No way! I wouldn’t do that! You’re my-“ Friend, she almost said. “You look out for me, Joel. I would never do anything like that to you. I swear, I thought they were for headaches. _I swear_! I was just trying to help.”

He considered this. The moment hung in the air between them. He let it go with a nod.

“Alright then. Didn’t seem like somethin’ you’d do anyway.”

_Then why the hell did you ask me? Fuck you, Joel!_

For one crazy moment, she wanted to cry. Betrayal and guilt roiled around inside her, making her feel sick and angry all at once. He’d said that mixing alcohol and drugs was a good way to kill someone. She knew that. She wasn’t stupid. It had been an honest mistake. She felt terrible about that. He’d said that it was too dangerous for a kid like her to go ‘screwing around’ outside like that. She felt much less terrible about that. What was the big deal? It wasn’t like this was the first time she’d snuck out to find something fun to do.

_But I shouldn’t have. It was a stupid risk to take. I’m the fucking salvation for mankind. That’s what Marlene said. And I was down there screwing around like I was thirteen and sneaking out of the dorm with Riley to go hang out with Winston or something._

_Riley’s dead, I’m living on borrowed time, and I’m acting like my life still belongs to me or something. Like I don’t have to earn every second of this. Like Riley wasn’t standing there on that rooftop… in the darkness… standing there in the rain…_

“Just don’t go runnin’ off like that, kid. You shouldn’t be takin’ chances like that.”

She rubbed the bite mark on her arm, hidden beneath her sleeve, and tried hard to ignore the obvious truth of his words, tried to forget about that night in Boston, tried to remember why it had seemed to be such a good idea to sneak out of this room just because she had been so bored. It had made sense to her at the time. All she had wanted to do was to blow off some steam, relieve a little boredom. She hadn’t gone far. She’d left a note. She’d been _good_. Or tried to be, anyway. And that should count for something.

_But it doesn’t. I’m not a kid anymore. Not after being bitten. Not after what happened to Riley. I don’t get to be a kid anymore._

_I have to do better. I can’t have him mad at me like this. Can’t take chances like this. I have to stay alive. I need him. I can’t get there without him. I can’t piss him off like this._

“So…” Her voice was as steady and friendly as she could make it. She wouldn’t allow herself to cry. Wouldn’t allow him to make her cry. Her intentions had been good. She just got dumb for a minute. She knew she couldn’t be a kid anymore, but she was just fourteen. She was _trying_ , damn it. “We still good?”

She pursed her lips, hoping he would say the right thing, fearing he wouldn’t.

“Yeah. We’re good.” He shrugged his broad shoulders, looked out through the window into the parking lot, checking to make sure the Honda was still there. “But you’re not off the hook just yet, girl. You earned yourself some chores today.”

“Cool. No problem.” Her voice was hopeful, unsure if he was punishing her or teasing her. Riley had often provoked the same pleasant confusion. She smiled, for more reasons than he could guess. “We’re going to stay another night then?”

“Yeah, sure. You talked me into it,” he shrugged, a bit more warmly than before, but still gruff. She had been selling the idea to him, hard, since he had half-dragged her back up to the room to scold her. “Like you said, it’s past noon now. We missed our best window to leave, I guess. Might as well stay, rest up a little, and hit the road first thing tomorrow.”

“Sweet. Thanks, Joel.”

“Mm-hmm. Now you gonna help me haul those crates of water up here or not? Our clothes ain’t gonna wash themselves, squirt.”

“We’re doing laundry? Awesome!”

_Holy shit! Who knew the idea of clean clothes could be so fucking exciting!_

“Nope,” he said matter-of-factly. “ _You’re_ doin’ laundry.”

“Me? By _myself_?” She didn’t whine, so that absolutely was not a whining quality coloring her voice. Anyone in the room thinking that would be mistaken, obviously.

“Which one of us drugged the other and snuck out of the room this mornin'?”

“Ugh…” she conceded, her shoulders slumping. “Fine.”

_God, he’s punishing me like I’m his misbehaving… kid… or something. Definitely didn’t expect that sort of thing to happen to sidekicks. I’ll bet Batman never made Robin wash his cape or wax the Batmobile._

_Still, punishment means he’s trying to make me learn a lesson, which means he cares._

_I think… I hope._

“Maybe after this,” he continued, picking a magazine from the stack she had unloaded on the bed, “you won’t be so quick to misbehave, Ellie.”

_Score! He does care!_

“Yes, sir.” Very contrite, making sure not to smile. It’s not punishment if he catches her smiling.

_Or maybe he just doesn’t like doing laundry._

_Fuck it. I’m just gonna pretend he’s doing this because he loves me or something._

 

* * *

 

The soap and shampoo were piled next to the TV. The shower curtain rod was covered with dripping clothes, his and hers. The tub was slowly draining itself of brown, dirty water. Not exactly the same quality of cleanliness you’d get from the machines in the dormitory laundry room, but the clothes were fresh enough to wear again.

Ellie stepped out of the bathroom, drying her hands off with a towel. She was wearing her tank top again. But with both her jeans dripping into the tub, she had no choice but to wear her little gym shorts. She did her best to not think about how incredibly bare her legs looked in them. Hopefully, he wouldn’t even notice.

_Why would he? It’s not like I’ve got great legs or anything. Not like Riley’s. Or Melody’s. I’m too short. He’s not gonna care about my stubby little legs. So stop worrying._

Her knees were red from kneeling on the bathroom floor for an hour while she scrubbed as much of the Pittsburgh mud and slime out of their clothing as she could. She wiped her bare feet on the carpet as she stepped off the tile floor of the bathroom.

Joel sat on the floor, opening the big can of beef stew that she’d given him earlier. Beyond the window, she could see the sun was still an hour or so from setting. The Wall Street Journal was lying next to him, folded in a very half-assed way. He must have read it while she was doing laundry. She wondered if it made him nostalgic or just sad. He finished unsealing the big can of beef stew, set it down, and picked up the can of peaches with cinnamon.

“Don’t open that, dude,” she said, crossing the room and sitting down across from him.

She was so happy to be clean, so eager to start eating; it never occurred to her that she shouldn’t sit cross-legged in shorts that small. He did his best not to notice her immodesty. It was more difficult for him than she might have imagined.

He sighed, looking at prized can in his hand with disappointment. “Mixed fruit then?”

“Even better, dude,” she chirped merrily.

She dug around in her backpack, feeling a small thrill knowing that the lovely Bryiana Noelle was still hiding down there, still her smoking hot little secret. She found what she was looking for and tossed it over to him.

“What… the… _hell_ …?” He uttered, genuinely surprised.

“You like ‘em?” she asked, pleased that he had reacted in such a way. She already knew the answer to her question from the wonder she saw in his eyes.

“M&M’s,” he said, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Jesus H. Christ. I can’t even remember the last time I had some M&M’s.”

“I can. I was eleven. A guy named Jerry. He gave them to me.”

“He gave you M&M’s? Is this back when you behaved and minded your elders?” His tone was serious, but one corner of his mouth quirked slightly, hinting at humor. “Was this durin’ those long lost ‘good girl’ years you never speak about?”

_Oh ho! Two can play this game, buddy._

“Pretty much yeah. I always did whatever any adult told me to do. I was a really good kid back then. Anyway, Jerry was this guy who lived across the hall from me and my very-temporary foster parents. One day, they were both at work and Jerry said he’d give me some candy if I’d come into his apartment for a while. But I couldn’t tell anyone. It had to be our secret.”

Joel’s eyes began to widen in horror.

“He made me put on this little red lace nightie. Then he gave me some Anacin and booze. I don’t remember what happened after that.”

Joel realized he was being played and tossed the pack of candy back at her. She caught it easily – Good reflexes, this kid, he thought – and laughed.

“For some reason, my butt _really hurt_ for a week after that. But I’ve been saving that pack of M &M’s ever since. You remind me a lot of Jerry, so I thought maybe I’d share them with you.”

They were both laughing now. She carefully opened the candy, giggling as he told her that he wanted nothing to do with the M&M’s after her ‘creepy ass’ story.

She knew better.

 

* * *

 

“Holy shit, those were good, Joel.”

“Yeah, they sure were.” He sounded content, something that, to her ears, seemed new or at least half-forgotten to him. He wiped his mouth with an old napkin and dropped it in the empty beef stew can. How could he have ever forgotten how good M&M’s tasted?

She shook the little brown wrapper, collecting the little chipped bits of colorful shells into one corner, tipped it back, and let them tumble into her mouth. Her idea to let the package set on the windowsill for a half hour or so had let the warm sunlight soften the candies just enough to return them to a state reasonably close to what they had been twenty years ago.

_Almost cracked a tooth on those first couple of M’s. Should have thought of the windowsill trick sooner. Longest half hour I’ve spent waiting for anything. Ever._

“Mmmmm.” She purred, licking her lips. “Wanna lick the wrapper?

“Knock yourself out, kid.”

“Hee hee. If there was anything to lick in there, I would. I was just trying to get your hopes up. Trying to be mean to you, I guess.” She wadded the wrapper, tossed it at the little waste paper can across the room, by the door. It dropped in perfectly. “Boosh! Two points!”

“I dunno, Squirt,” Joel said in his amiable Texas drawl, “Looked like a three pointer from here.”

“Hey, yeah! I was outside the line, wasn’t I? Man! I’m even better than I thought!”

“And humble,” he added.

“Shit, dude. I’m more humble than anybody you’ll ever meet.”

_He knows basketball? We’ve got common ground! I can work with this!_

“You like basketball, Joel?”

“Ah, more of a football fan, myself. But I played a game of hoops or two in my time,” he said, his eyes focused on something far away, beyond the window, up in the late evening clouds. “Kinda surprised you know the game, to be honest, kid.”

_Yes! Common ground! Make this work, Ellie!_

“Yeah, we played it all the time. It… um… what was it…” she faltered, trying to dig up the memory before the conversation hit a lull. “Oh yeah! It ‘encouraged a sense of teamwork, taught the importance of competition, and…’ uhh… something about being a good cardio workout or something.”

“Did you like it?” he asked.

“Sure,” she replied, taking such joy in talking to him about such trivial things that she couldn’t put the feeling into words. It made her feel normal. Made the world around her feel normal, just for a little while. “Well… I wasn’t a big fan of the game itself, I guess. Too many rules. But I liked running around on the court… I like tackling the other kids.”

“There’s no tacklin’ in basketball, Ellie.”

She snorted. “Maybe the way you play it, old man.”

 

* * *

 

The last rays of daylight were almost gone. The little rectangular LED camp light had been sitting on the windowsill since noon. It would be time to tie it to the jug of water soon. Another thirty minutes or so was her best guess.

Joel had spent the last hour wiping down his guns with a thick oilcloth he kept in a heavy, plastic Ziploc freezer bag, somewhere in one of the many pouches of his big backpack. He had even been considerate enough to wipe her shotgun and pistol down as well. She busied herself sharpening her switchblade on his old whetstone. She held the stone in a damp, wrapped towel so it wouldn’t slip around, just like he had told her do. Kept the blade at a twenty-degree angle, just as he had told her to do. Used long, even strokes, just as he had told her to do. He said it was a chore, but she knew better. He was teaching her how to do this. Now she knew how to take care of her mom’s knife. She couldn’t stop smiling even though she knew you shouldn’t smile your way through chores.

_This is easier than I thought it would be. Had this knife for over a year, and I’ve never sharpened it until tonight._

He had sat next to her on the mattress, walked her through the first few strokes, making sure she understood what to do before he went back to his bed and the guns, leaving her to her task.

_Almost like a father-daughter bonding moment out of a sappy book or something._

She smiled, watching her steel slide along his stone. She sighed contentedly. There was something about this image that she liked.

“Don’t let the stone get clogged, kid.” He didn’t look up from the gun in his lap. “Keep it wet now.”

“Okay.” She worked up a mouthful of saliva and spit it on the whetstone in one gooey dollop, just as he had taught her to do. “Gross.”

A few more careful stokes, and she was done. She held up the blade and flicked her finger across the edge. She whistled (so glad to know how to do that now). This knife hadn’t been this sharp since Marlene gave it to her last year. It might even be a little sharper now than it had been then.

Joel dug around in his bag, produced a small, wide leather strap, and tossed it over to her.

“What’s this?” she asked, holding it up to get a better look at it.

“That’s the leather paddle I’m gonna spank you with if you ever try sneakin’ off while I’m asleep again.”

“Ha ha,” she replied, her voice thick with sarcasm. She focused on the leather strap in her hands, trying to distract herself from the strange, electric thrill that had run through her when he had made the joke.

_Why does that turn me on so much? Why do I have to be weird like this? Normal girls don’t get all hot and bothered at the thought of a getting a spanking, right? Why am I like this?_

“It’s a strop,” he said, setting her shotgun down, finished with it.

“Strop,” she repeated, testing the word, giving the P at the end a nice pop. “So what’s a strop?”

“It’s a leather strap. You use it for sharpenin’ razors and stuff.” He got up, crossed the room and sat down next to her again. “You can’t put a really good edge on a blade without a strop.”

He took the switchblade from her small hand, and began to run it along the smooth side of the leather. She thought about scooting over just bit, to giving him a little room, but decided she didn’t want to. She was happy where she was, happy where he was. She fought the urge to rest her head on his shoulder.

“See?” he was saying. “The leather’s been treated with an abrasive, gives it just the right amount of grit. A good strop will put an edge on your blade sharp enough to shave with.”

_Sit right here. For the rest of the night, Joel. Let’s just sit here and talk. I like how you talk to me. Not like I’m a dumb kid, not like I’m a burden who’s been pawned off on you, not like I’m a misfit who’s always in trouble. But like we’re friends or something._

“And that’s that,” he said, handing the polished blade back to her very carefully.

“That’s it? Don’t I need to keep doing it?” She marveled at how shiny and sharp it was.

_I love when you teach me stuff._

“Nah. It don’t take much to bring the blade to a nice edge once you’ve had it on the stone for a while.” He got up and returned to his side of the room, whetstone and strop in hand. She watched him go, trying to keep her expression casual and pleasant, wishing he was still sitting beside her. “And you did a good job sharpenin’ it.”

_I want you to teach me everything._

“Thanks,” she said. She folded the knife and put it away, enjoying the compliment, making sure to keep her smile in place as he sat down on his bed across from hers, trying not to notice how lonely it had just become over here, on her bed.

 

* * *

 

The water lamp was off, the curtains drawn. They lay there in the blackness. Ellie pulled her covers up around her neck, feeling sleep beginning to creep over her. Across the room, Joel turned over again, restless. He had slept too much of the day away this morning and now sleep wasn’t coming easy to him.

She thought hard about this opportunity. Knew she couldn’t waste it. Prayed she wouldn’t fuck it up.

“Joel…” she began, her soft voice suddenly filling the deathly quiet room.

“What is it, Ellie?” his reply was low, gruff. “You’re not drunk again, are you?”

“No no. I’m living clean and sober these days.” She thought about the bottle of piña colada cooler, carefully wrapped in a towel, hiding in her backpack. “I’m off the sauce. I swear.”

“’Off the sauce’,” he repeated, a trace of humor in his voice. “Where the hell do you pick this stuff up?”

“Ah reckon Ah’m a mite tetched in th’ head, pardner,” she giggled, her voice as low and gruff as she could manage, doing her best impression of him. Beneath the sheets, she crossed her fingers, hoping it wouldn’t piss him off.

He snorted a sharp laugh. ”I’m gonna chuck this pillow at you in a minute, you brat.”

_Awesome! He’s willing to play!_

“Go ahead. I’ve got a pretty sweet collection of pillows going on over here. One more, and I’ll have all the pillows. I’m gonna corner the market!”

She smiled, hoping the conversation had enough momentum to continue naturally, without being prodded. But it seemed to peter out. She had know way of knowing that Tess often joked about cornering the market on all sorts of silly yet valuable items. Ellie could never have guessed that she’d opened a fresh wound in her friend.

The silence hung in the air. Joel didn’t turn over, didn’t grumble. He just lay there, staring off into the darkness. After along moment, he sighed. The sound was forlorn to her ears.

_I did something wrong, didn’t I? I don’t know what, but I fucked this up somehow._

She sensed the mood in the room had changed, but she still craved some sort of connection to him tonight. Tomorrow night, who knows where they might make camp. But it was almost certain that it would not be a place as safe and cozy as this one. She had to reach out to him while she could.

She plowed ahead. “Are they still out there? Those huge packs of infected you told me about? Back when we were looking at all those tanks and stuff?”

Why had he even opened his mouth about that? Hearing shit like that would just give her nightmares. He suddenly wished he had a drink. She wanted to talk. Talking wasn’t easy for him these days. Alcohol had a way of making people like him open up. Social lubricant, that’s what Tommy used to call it when he wanted to sound fancy.

“Nah. Most of them are dead now. Burned the motherfuckers to ash, long time ago.”

“The army?” She propped herself up on one elbow, trying to see him in the gloom. “The army got them?”

“Yeah, the army. And the air force too. Mostly the air force, I guess. Dropped so much napalm on ‘em that the fires burned for days,” He squinted his eyes, remembering those early days. “The bodies just burned and burned, there were so many of them. The stars wouldn’t come out on nights like that. Just a dull red glow on the horizon, like an old campfire or somethin’. But even with all those bombs, all that fire, we barely put a dent in their numbers. Most of the packs just died out from starvation, I guess.”

“They starved? Really?” He could hear her shifting around, sitting up. She was intrigued.

“Sure. The things still have to eat. The bodies need fuel, just like you and me. Nothin’ cordyceps can do to change that fact. But it wasn’t too long before they started runnin’ out of people like us to eat.” He couldn’t see her shiver. “And they’re not much good at catchin’ wild game. Gotta use tools and traps for that.”

He inhaled deeply, trying to decide what to tell her, what to leave out. She sat patiently, listening to him breathing, thinking, a pillow clutched to her chest for security.

“After that, the packs began to break up, wander off in search of dark places to die,” he continued, choosing his words, his memories very carefully. “There are places… old warehouses, malls… the airport in Oklahoma City… just _covered_ in that damned fungus, wall to wall… floor to ceiling. Forests of the shit, you know? All trapped behind the steel and glass. Spores so thick in the air, it’s like that godawful fog that rolls over Boston Harbor some mornings.”

She pulled her legs close to her chest, clutched her toes with nervous fingers, trying to visualize what he was describing. She was glad it was so dark. Neither one of them had to see the way she cringed with an unbidden, unburiable expression of dread.

“Like a whole other world in there, behind all that glass. Christ, you can’t ever forget what it looks like, kid. Somethin’ out of a nightmare. But almost pretty, in a sick way. Don’t seem quite real. Like Alice in Wonderland, all upside down and inside out.”

The words hung in the air, no more followed. She wanted to say something, hoped she wouldn’t fuck things up again.

“Jeez, Joel… Maybe that’s how we’ll beat them. Just outlast them. Give everybody the cure – once we get it outta me, I mean – and just wait until they all starve to death. What do you think, Joel?”

He heaved a very weary sigh. Sleep was finally beginning to come to him. “I dunno. Sounds like a fine plan kid. You should get that to the president right away. I’m too tired right now or I’d call him myself… Fuck, I could use a drink right now.”

A long minute passed. He lay there on his back, staring up at a ceiling he couldn’t see.

“Here you go, Joel.” A voice so soft it was barely more than a whisper. Damn, this kid could move quietly!

He felt a small, warm hand taking his hand, pressing a small, cool bottle into it.

“What’s this?”

“The last cooler. I was saving it. Thought maybe we’d drink it when we got to Jackson or something. But I want you to have it.”

He smiled, placed his other hand over hers. Squeezed it gently.

“That’s sweet, kiddo. I appreciate it. But let’s save it for a better time, okay?”

“You sure?” She sounded so concerned that it made him wince.

Gotta keep this kid at arm’s length, he thought to himself, feeling the softness of her small hand beneath his rough palm. Sweet as she is, I don’t need her hanging around once I get her to Tommy’s. Bill was right. Having someone around you care about is only good for one thing in this shitty world. And I don’t need the blood of any more little girls on my hands.

“I’m sure. Let’s save it for later. Go on. Get back in bed.”

“Okay.”

She was sad to feel his hand slip away from hers, to feel the connection they had started to share slip away too. But she did as she was told.

 

* * *

 

“You ready?” He was lacing his boot up.

“Ready.” She adjusted her backpack straps, settling the weight evenly across her narrow shoulders. It hadn’t been this full since she left Boston. Several cans of food, her own towels (finally!), soap and shampoo, a bottle of piña colada cooler, assorted newspapers and magazines to read, a Hello Kitty lighter, a can of Pepsi, a bottle of Scope, a box of baking soda, a new windbreaker, a snubnose revolver with plenty of ammo, and, of course, the greatest magazine ever, hidden at the very bottom, next to the letter from her mother.

“Man. My pack’s so fucking _full_. This place was like Christmas or something.”

“Yeah. We’ll do well for the next few days, I reckon.”

_Reckon. I love that word so much. So fucking cute._

“First one to the bike gets to ride up front!” she said, laughing, and bolted for the door, slinging her shotgun over her shoulder.

“Ellie! Get back here, damn it!” He stood up, grabbing his pack, reaching for his Mossberg pump-action. “I’m not kiddin’!”

But it was too late. Ellie was already through the door, ready to maker her way down to the bike to claim her victory, laughing all the way.

Joel started after her, not finding the joy in the noise she was making, drawing the kind of attention they were better off avoiding.

He almost bumped into her. She had frozen in the doorway, halfway out onto the walkway. She wasn’t laughing any more.

“Ummm… Hello,” he heard Ellie say. She wasn’t speaking to him.

He raised the shotgun in his right hand, reached out to with her with the left, ready to yank her back into the safety of the room.

“Is your name Tala?” she asked.

“Tala,” came a woman’s voice from outside, correcting Ellie’s slight mispronunciation of it. She sounded scared. Scared people could be very dangerous. “How did you know that?”

“I found a letter. A couple of letters, actually,” Ellie was talking slowly, using her gift with words and her innocent, friendly demeanor to defuse this unexpected situation. “My name’s Ellie.”

Joel kept his hand extended towards her, his fingers ready to grab the shoulder strap of her pack.

“Nice to meet you, Ellie,” came the voice again, a little less fearful that before. “What are you doing in my room?”

 

* * *

 

Tala Villanueva was a small woman, about the same size as Ellie, just a bit more filled out, Joel noted. Pretty, probably in her late 20s. Filipino, he guessed, but didn’t know for sure. She was armed with the fire axe that Joel had left in the parking lot two nights before. A red and silver crowbar was tucked inside her belt. She held the key to room 205 in the hand that wasn’t holding the axe. She did her best not to notice what a mess they had made of her room.

The three of them stood in the familiar comfort of motel room, briefly relating the unlikely series of events that had brought them together in such a strange fashion. Ellie did most of the talking. Tala seemed to prefer it that way. Her eyes were warm with Ellie, but nervous with her big protector. Ellie told her about leaving Boston, getting a truck in Lincoln, losing it to the hunters in Pittsburgh, finding a motorcycle outside Wheeling. She left out the part about the bite hiding beneath the sleeve of her shirt, hoping the woman wouldn’t ask why they would ever leave Boston in the first place. She was careful to omit Tess as well. She went into great detail about what a fat pain in the ass Bill had been.

When Tala began to tell them her tale, it seemed to Joel’s ears that the woman might be leaving a few key details out of her story too.

There had been a group of survivors hiding out here for the last few years. Over time, they had become something of a family. She had fallen in love with a man. He had cheated on her with a new girl that had just joined. It was too much. Tala took off to get away for a little while, holing up in the storeroom of a Denny’s a few miles from here. Her friend Sheila let her borrow a set of keys to the restaurant. Sheila always insisted on hanging on to all the keys. After a few days, Tala returned to find the Motel 6 overrun, her friends gone or infected. She stayed at the Denny’s for a while longer, but her supplies began to run low. She had risked a return to the motel to get her stuff, found the nest of infected had been cleaned out. Found new people living in her room. She was ready to come home now. It was one of only two rooms left here with intact windows. It was safe. It was home. She was willing to share the room, if that could be arranged.

Ellie noticed how Tala had looked at Joel as she broached the subject of shared living space, like she was trying to size him up, weighing risks, almost as if she were gambling.

Ellie seemed open to the idea of sharing space, but Joel explained how they had to be on their way. Tala couldn’t seem to decide if she wanted them gone or not.

“Oh! Hey!” A thought occurred to Ellie, one she had to share right away. “Before we go, I need to do something. I want a clean conscience before I hit the road.”

Ellie knelt down, opened her pack, took out the gun and the ammunition, put them on the chair near the door. Joel was surprised she had them. He had no idea the snubnose Smith & Wesson even existed. The windbreaker was all the way at the bottom of her bag, under a blanket and many other items. She would not remember it was down there until this place was many miles behind her.

“Where the hell did you get that?” he asked, one of the few times he had spoken since they had all gathered together in this room.

“I’m sorry,” Ellie said sincerely, talking to both of them at once. “I found it in the luggage, Joel. I wouldn’t have taken it if I knew you were coming back, Tala.”

“That’s okay. I would have done the same thing.” Tala seemed genuinely touched at Ellie’s honesty. She looked at Joel, seeing him in a new light. She put her axe on the bed, no longer afraid of him. “Your daughter is a good girl, sir. You’ve raised her right.”

Ellie’s heart jumped at the word ‘daughter’. She tried to keep it from showing on her face.

“She’s not my daughter. She’s my…” He trailed off, not sure how to describe her.

“I’m his sidekick,” Ellie jumped in, smoothing over the sudden gap in conversation in her endearing, outgoing way. She shrugged as though a young girl and an older man palling around like this were the most normal thing the world. “We travel the country together, solving mysteries, fighting crime. That kind of stuff.”

Tala laughed at the unexpected joke. It was a beautiful laugh, like the chiming of small bells. She grinned, reassessed the pair, trying to puzzle them out in light of this new development. Her questioning dark eyes swept the room, saw that both beds had been slept in. Ellie missed the look, Joel did not. It pissed him off a little. But Tala’s eyes were soft now. She seemed like she might be willing to trust him. A little, anyway.

He tried not to stare at her trim, appealing figure. He didn’t need distracting thoughts like that now. Maybe never again. He remembered Bill’s words and tried to focus on them, pushing away any rising desire he might feel for this pretty young woman. Jackson was a long ways away, and the sooner he was on the road, the better.

“Oh! I have this too!” Ellie exclaimed, all fired up at the prospect of having new people to talk to, utterly oblivious to the unspoken communication going on between Tala and Joel. She fished the white Hello Kitty lighter out of her jeans pocket and handed it to the woman. “It’s super cute. But I can’t keep it. It’s yours.”

Tala seemed genuinely pleased with Ellie now.

“You know,” she said in a low voice, leaning closer to Ellie, pretending to share a great secret. “It’s unusual to meet a girl who’s both very pretty _and_ very honest.”

Ellie blushed, her eyes going wide for a moment. The compliment had blindsided her.

“Pretty girls don’t have to be honest. They can’t get away with murder and no one ever calls them on it,” Tala said. “So you must be very special, I guess.”

“One of a kind, “ Joel said behind her.

Ellie pressed her lips together and her cheeks turned a bright shade of red. She looked down at the carpet, over at the trashcan so they couldn’t see her face. She remembered the empty M&M’s wrapper she had tossed in there earlier and suddenly felt very guilty.

“I ate your M&M’s,” she mumbled, not knowing what else to do. “Sorry. If I’d known you were coming back…”

“I didn’t have any M&M’s, Ellie. What are you talking about?” Ellie made herself look at Tala, who was smiling warmly, if a bit confused.

“Down in Enrique’s room. He was saving them for you. Had bag of them. Had a little red lacey…umm… nightie, I guess.” Ellie trailed off, embarrassed and sad now. “It’s still down there. You’ll find it stuffed in a box behind the chair.”

“Oh yeah? Well, that sounds like him. He only knew one way to apologize. And it always involved sweets, booze, and sex.” A hint of melancholy tinged her voice, but only Joel heard it.

Ellie giggled nervously, looked away from Tala, looked back. Blushed again.

Joel had no idea what they were talking about. He was happy to stay on the sidelines. He did his best to look out the window at the clouds that were in no way having inappropriate conversation with a fourteen year old. Clouds were happy to mind their own damn business.

After looking at the lighter in her hand for a few seconds, Tala handed it back to Ellie.

“Keep the lighter, cutey. I have another one with Badtz Maru on it. I like him more anyway.”

“Bat moo who?” asked Ellie, joyfully slipping the fancy lighter into her jeans pocket, thrilled to be called ‘cutey’.

“Little penguin punk.” Joel offered from behind her.

“That’s right. He’s the bad boy of the Hello Kitty world, Ellie.”

Ellie was intrigued; she twisted around to look at the big man standing behind her. His eyes were still fixed on the clouds outside the window. “How did the heck did you know that, Joel?”

She had no idea why she felt the need to clean up her language around this pretty lady.

“Let’s go, Ellie.” He placed one big hand on her shoulder, guided her to the door. “Ma’am, it’s been very nice meetin’ you. But we gotta hit the road.”

Tala stepped out of the way, letting them pass. Her small hand brushed against Joel’s bicep as he stepped through the door, bringing him to a stop for just a moment. Ellie, outside on the concrete walkway, couldn’t see the look that passed between Joel and Tala.

“You could stay, you know,” Ellie heard her say. Her tone was soft and friendly. “Just for a day or two. To rest up, if you need.”

Joel felt her dark eyes on him, drifting around to various points of interest, taking him in. He felt himself stir. This petite woman’s legs and hips could really fill out a pair of jeans. She might not stretch the front out of a t-shirt the way Tess had, but what she had was very pleasant to look at. He tried to focus on anything but the old familiar need that was rising inside him. This wasn’t at all like that sick need he’d felt for Ellie while he was drunk and high. This was normal. It felt very right to him.

She pushed her shoulder length black hair over her ear and looked at him in a way that struck him as particularly friendly, very inviting. “I’d love to have you and your cute little sidekick stick around for a bit. Plenty of room here at the Motel 6.”

“Can we, Joel?” asked Ellie, trying to twist around to join the conversation in the doorway. Joel’s hand held her firmly in place.

“Wish we could, ma’am. But we gotta keep headin’ west. We’re kinda on the clock. There’s people waitin’ for us, you know?”

“Oh. All right then.” There was an odd note of disappointment in her words that Ellie couldn’t quite place. “Good luck to both of you.”

Joel hustled Ellie down the stairs and across the blacktop to the Honda as quickly as he could without it appearing as though he might be in a hurry.

“Shoulda kept the gun, Ellie,” Joel said, digging his sunglasses out of his pack.

“How could I and still sleep at night?” she asked, zipping up the denim jacket.

“All right then,” Joel mused. Tala was right. Ellie was an honest girl.

“She seemed nice, Joel. What can’t we stay a night or two?” Ellie asked, slipping the helmet on her head. “I could share a bed with her. I don’t mind.”

_And spooning with her would be fun. She’s pretty. Betcha I’d sleep like a baby._

“Stayed here too long as it is. We gotta hit the road, kid.” He was astride the bike quickly. He grabbed her hand, pulled her onboard as well.

“Fine, fine,” she grumbled, settling in on her perch behind him. “But it woulda been nice to have another woman to talk to for a while.”

”Shit. I got enough woman trouble as it is,” he joked, starting the engine. “Don’t need two of you goin’ at me at the same time, drivin' me up the damn wall, cluckin' like hens about Hello Kitty and shit. Not in a room that small.”

This made her smile.

_‘Cutey’ and ‘woman’ in the same day. Man, we’re staying at every Motel 6 between here and Jackson. I’m going to insist on it._

They pulled out onto the open road, Ellie waving at Miss Tala Villanueva, who stood at the window of her lonely little room, watching them go.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a nice layover, Ellie and Joel are finally back on the road to Jackson. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think Tala’s odds for long-term survival are very good. 
> 
> For those who are curious about such things, Joel was right when he suspected that Tala was holding something back when she told them about her reasons for being gone when they found her room. Tala had lost hope when Enrique cheated on her and left to (most likely) kill herself. She stole the keys to Denny’s from Sheila, who was sort of de facto leader of the Motel 6 group of survivors. Sheila tried to follow her friend to Denny’s, but got bit along the way. She returned to the Motel 6 without having found Tala. Shelia was a control freak and managed to convince herself that she wouldn’t turn because she simply wouldn’t allow herself to. Hiding her bite from the others, Sheila eventually turned of course, and attacked the other survivors. The commotion drew more infected from the nearby buildings, and it all sort of spiraled out of control from there. By the time Tala returns, having decided not to kill herself, she finds everyone dead or gone, and two strangers in her room. Whether or not anyone got away is not something I ever decided for certain. Maybe Tala will find Enrique or Russ or someone from her old group. But maybe not. Maybe she’ll shoot herself with the gun Ellie left for her. Who knows.
> 
> Check back in a few days to see what happens to Joel and Ellie as they get back on the highway in Chapter Eleven: Doubleback.


	11. Doubleback

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s trouble on the highway, forcing Joel and Ellie to abandon Interstate 70 and find another way to Wyoming. Fuel is siphoned, bricks are thrown, and a workbench is put to use. Also, Joel may unexpectedly find his balls in terrifying, testicle-removing peril before the end of the chapter. Possibly. Maybe. (Probably not).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This installment is named for an old ZZ Top song. I love those guys; they’re great in concert. This has no bearing whatsoever on the chapter. Just putting it out there.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 11 – Doubleback**

 

The sun-faded sign, still mounted to the rusting framework above the highway, told Joel all he needed to know. He slowed the bike to a stop, letting the engine idle, weighing his options. He knew this was bound to happen sooner or later, sticking to the highways the way they had. All roads lead to Rome and all that shit.

“See that sign?” he asked.

Ellie looked around, wondering why they had stopped, read the sign nearest to them, looking for clues.

“What’s a ‘weigh station’, Joel?”

He clicked his tongue, pointed up and ahead, to the cluster of old green signs suspended over the blacktop. It looked like all the other old highway signs they had seen all morning since they’d left the Motel 6 behind, except the information on this one was covered up, plastered over with large white magnetic tiles, each bearing a single letter. They were cracked and faded. A few were missing.

                 XXX WARNING XXX  
         COL MBUS QUAR NTINE ZONE  
         50 MILES AHE D STAY ON I 70  
               EXIT COL EGE AV NUE  
         HA E ALL DOCUM NTS READY  
     SUR ENDER ALL WEAP NS AT GATE

Below that, a large rectangular yellow sign had been mounted. Unlike the ad hoc sign made from individual letters above it, this was a standard, pre-made magnetic sign used by roadwork crews in the time before the collapse.

                        EXIT ONLY

All the other signs around it had been covered over as well. Red magnetics, each reading:

                     LANE CLOSED

Only one way forward on this highway, only one destination. And not anywhere he wanted to go.

Ellie read the signs, tried to take in their meaning. “Do you think they’re still standing?”

Joel shook his head. “From what I heard, they never even got the damn thing up and runnin’. Started to, I think, but they never finished it."

“Why not?”

“Ran out of time. Or ran out of money, maybe.”

Money was a thing Ellie largely understood from games of Monopoly with Riley.

“Money? People needed a safe place to be. Who gives a shit about money?”

“Back then? Almost everyone. Everyone in charge, anyway. Right up to the end, I guess. End of the world or not, workers wouldn’t stay on the job, stay away from their families, without some incentive to do so. Cash was a pretty good incentive. Still had value back then.”

I know me and Tommy made a lot of money helping to get the walls up around the Austin FEMA camp, he thought. But by the time the job was done, the only thing the money was good for was wiping your ass. Couldn't even buy the new FEDRA ration cards with the stuff.

He thought about telling her that, but it would just open the door to too many questions. This girl couldn't stop herself from asking questions, not if you gave her the slightest chance.

“So what’s there now if there’s not a QZ?” she asked.

Yep. Right on cue, Ellie.

“Probably just a big, abandoned dump, kid,” he groused, his mind working on a new plan, not really wanting to give a history lesson at the moment. “But maybe a few people are there, if enough secure structures were built… if they’re _still_ secure, I mean.”

Ellie leaned in very close, almost whispering, almost as though she were afraid someone might hear her.

“Hunters?”

“Maybe. Or crazies. Or maybe just people. Or loads of infected. Hell, I never heard any news come out of that place, so I can’t even guess, really. No way in hell am I takin’ us there. I know that.”

“What do we do, Joel?” Her voice was nervous, despite her best efforts at hiding it. She didn’t like being stopped on the open highway, with no cover to hide behind except the spooky remains of a few long dead cars. She rested one hand on her shotgun, snug across her chest, drawing comfort from it.

“Double back, find a way around.” He sounded irritated, but she could only guess as to why.

She didn’t know which one of the many indicators clustered across the Gold Wing’s panel was the fuel gauge. She had no idea how low they were on gasoline. She hadn’t thought to look at the cars they had passed this morning. She didn’t notice how all the gas caps were missing.

Joel dropped the bike into first gear, turned it around in an impressively tight circle and proceeded back the way they’d come, along I-70. To Ellie, the novelty of seeing all the dead cars now facing towards them made them seem alive, no longer rusted, dead things to be driven around but actual oncoming traffic. She grinned behind her visor. Weaving around the clusters of oncoming traffic was like something out of an action movie.

 

* * *

 

This road seemed to have three names, for some reason. Ellie had studied the signs as they passed them, working their way north, away from the familiar path of Interstate 70.

_State Route 37… Alexandria Road… Johnstown Road… Still on the same road._

_Can one road have three names? How the fuck did anyone find their way around back then?_

They had skirted around the amusingly named town of Pataskala, working their way north and west, giving the ruins of Columbus as much space as they could. They stopped in a few places, where they spotted vehicles that looked like they might still have fuel in them. Not much was found, but a little was better than nothing. Anything to keep the wheels of the bike turning.

They passed another cluster of cars, Joel slowed down, looking for gas caps that were still in place. He spotted a couple. The bike came to a smooth stop. He left the engine running.

“You know the drill,” he barked as she clambered down.

“You bet,” her answer was quick, unhesitating. This was becoming second nature to her.

Joel pulled the empty plastic jug from the bike’s rear compartment, hustled over to the nearest vehicle, his shotgun in hand. With a clatter, he placed the Mossberg on the ground, began to pull the siphoning hose out of his backpack. Ellie climbed up onto the hood of the pickup truck, scrambling across the sun-heated metal, taking up her position as watchful sentry.

“See anything?”

“Looks clear, Joel.”

Joel snaked the long hose down the neck, into the truck’s tank, took a long draw from it, spit out the gasoline that squirted forth. He directed the hose into the jug, spilling as little as he could. The container filled up quickly. This old truck had been a jackpot.

_Man, I wish he’d teach me how to steal gas like that. It looks so fucking badass._

He pinched the hose off, breaking the flow of the fuel, hustled the jug back to the bike, poured it into the tank as quickly as he could, splashing as little as possible. The big water-cooled engine slurped it down thirstily.

_Why do we go for miles and never see a car? Then we find a bunch of them, all clustered together like this. Why aren’t they more spread out? Is this what we do? Huddle together when we’re scared? Are these cars all that’s left of those frightened people? Is this all that’s going to be left of us? Rusty metal and cracked blacktop? Is anyone even going to miss us?_

“Another jug?” she asked, still standing on top of the hood, looking warily in all directions. This part of the country was thick with forests. She was more afraid of infected coming out of the tree lines than she was of a hunter with a scoped rifle.

“Yeah. One more,” he was on the move again, coming back to her and the truck. “Maybe two. Quite a bit in here. Still clear?”

“Still clear.”

 

* * *

 

Johnstown Road / Alexandria Road / State Route 37 had now bafflingly become Main Street as well.

_How the fuck did everyone not get lost and die with this sort of bullshit going on with their street names?_

The black and silver sign ahead of them had a very strange shape. Ellie had no idea what the borders of Ohio looked like, so she couldn’t think of a single reason why anyone would use such an odd pattern instead of a square or rectangle.

         JOHNSTOWN  
       Founded 1813.  
     Famous Mastodon  
             Remains  
      Discovered Here,  
               1926

She tugged Joel’s sleeve excitedly, pointed at the sign.

“Cool! Wooly mammoths!”

“Yeah. Wooly mammoths.”

So that’s what mastodon means, he thought to himself. Figured it was some kind of dinosaur or something. Pretty close, I guess.

Ellie tried very hard to imagine the big, furry elephants stomping around these lands, but it was hard. The long rows of red brick buildings and abandoned cars didn’t leave much room for giant, majestic beasts to romp around.

_Unless they started knocking the buildings down…_

Suddenly, the streets of Johnstown became much more exciting in her mind.

They rolled past the dry cleaners, next to the bank. Ellie wished the laundry machines in there had electricity and water. After spending an hour on the floor of the Motel 6 bathroom, scrubbing clothes by hand, she was in no hurry to return to that anytime soon.

Up ahead, something called ‘Lizzie’s Bed and Breakfast’ called out to her with its amazing, if admittedly decaying, fanciness. She couldn’t wait to see it up close, but suddenly it began to wheel off to her right.

Breakfast would have been nice. Breakfast in bed, even nicer.

_I brought Riley breakfast in bed once. Well, it was more like Riley made me bring her breakfast in bed after I screwed up and got both of us in trouble. But I was happy to do it. Happy not to get my butt kicked by her too. That was a win-win for both of us._

Joel eased the bike around another corner. Like most American small towns, the primary streets were lined with small businesses and the like. They had already passed both the elementary and high schools. He wondered if Ellie wanted to stop and visit the high school. She was weird like that, always trying to imagine what the world had been like, trying to figure out what her place in it would have been.

The number of dead cars near the center of town had been increasing as they progressed. Joel hoped that they could thread their way down a side street, avoiding the worst of it. So far, the town seemed deserted, but you could never be sure about these places. Any building could hide a mess of runners, or a crazy with a rifle.

“Joel. Look.” Her voice piped up from over his shoulder. He saw her finger pointing at something down the street, the post office, from the looks of it.

A giant red sign, the standard issue ones mounted to the pull behind trailers, was rusting away quietly in the large parking lot in front of the gray building. Joel slowed the bike to a stop as they neared it. It was like so many signs to found in small towns just like this one. The blanks had been filled with thick grease pencil markings. It was a giant form letter sent out by a failing bureaucracy to a doomed people.

 **MANDATORY EVACUATION NOTICE**  
                All residents of _Licking County_ and all  
            outlying areas are required to evacuate by  
 _6:30_ _pm 10 / 5 / 13_  
 **PLEASE FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS**  
 **OF DESIGNATED AUTHORITIES**

     All evacuees will be asked to provide identification  
          and may be subject to onsite medical testing.  
        Any evacuees resisting official directives will be  
                                     DETAINED.

Miniature versions of this same red and white sign were stapled to almost every telephone pole and taped up in every shop window across town.

“Just like in Lincoln,” he muttered, his distaste for the sign and the well-intentioned failure it represented were readily apparent. “Least they got a warnin’. Too bad it was to probably to report to a QZ that was never finished.”

Ellie snickered softly, oblivious to his words. Her attention was only on the sign.

“ _Licking_ County. Hee hee. Man, if I could pick one place to be from, this’d be the place.”

 

* * *

 

“In and out. Quick, okay?”

“Roger dodger,” she was already climbing down from the bike, parked beside one of the four gas pumps out front.

“What we’re lookin’ for is a map. We need to find the best way to get back on the highway on the far side of Columbus. We gotta stay away from that place. And we can’t stay here too long, right?”

“Heard you the first three times, Joel.” Her flashlight was already stabbing into the darkness through the mostly intact windows of the auto repair shop, trying to pick out details that could be glimpsed behind the reinforcing layers of lumber that covered each window. It looked safe enough in there, but you could never be certain.

“And I’m goin’ in there, first. Yeah?”

“Always,” she sounded slightly disheartened. “I’ll be right behind you.”

That was settled. The trick now was to find a way in. The place was buttoned up tight, the front door barricaded from the inside, the windows boarded up as well. The Marathon station across the street had burned down at some point in the past, and the Circle K down the block had clearly been looted years ago. This shop looked to be the last place on this end of town that might hold supplies.

“’I shoot like a girl… So I’ll aim for your balls!’” Ellie read from the graffiti someone (the owner?) had painted on the boards nailed across the garage doors. She laughed. “I like this person already.”

Joel pointed out a pre-printed plastic sign on the front door, affixed to the inside of the glass with aged, yellowing tape. Ellie read it aloud as he tested the door handle. Locked.

“’Attention Thieves: Please carry two forms of I.D. so I can notify your NEXT OF KIN.’” She laughed. “Yep. I like this woman a lot.”

“You may not like her so much if she’s still alive in there, kid.”

“Lemme check… Nope. I’m not the one with balls, Joel,” she giggled, cupping her crotch with her free hand for emphasis. “I’m gonna be just fine. It’s you I’m worried about, my ball-packing buddy.”

Joel grimaced, not finding the mental picture as funny as she did.

As they worked their way around the side of the garage, Ellie found more graffiti spray-painted on the bricks.

“’I have too many bullets! Please help me get rid of them!’” she read, smiling, clearly in awe of the bravery this woman must have possessed as the CBI outbreak took over the world, as society collapsed, as she marked the walls of this garage with her defiance, her reckless, inspiring fearlessness. “’These doors are locked for your protection. Not mine!’”

Ellie whistled softly.

“Seriously, Joel. I _really_ like this woman. She must have the biggest, brassiest, ballsiest, brass balls ever.”

“Ellie. Zip it.”

“Maybe she’ll let you hold her brass ones for a while if she shoots yours off,” she giggled.

“One more crack like that, and you can go wait by the bike.”

She zipped it. Men had no sense of humor when it came to ball-related danger.

At the end of the little alley that ran along side the garage, there was a chain link fence with a large, locked gate. Joel easily boosted Ellie over, allowing her to unlock the latch and let him into the small rear parking lot.

Behind the garage, there were several 55-gallon steel drums filled with trash. Empty milk crates were stacked carefully along the wall. Two old SUVs were parked close together. They hadn’t been abandoned here. They had been parked carefully, each one facing a different direction, a different escape route, ready to go at a moment’s notice.

“I don’t like this,” Joel muttered, looking in the windows of the trucks. No supplies, but both had been kept very clean at one time. Just in case supplies needed to be loaded into them in a hurry. The dashboards of both were coated in a heavy layer of dust. The SUVs themselves has seen many a dirty rain since the last time they had been washed. The tires all needed air. He wondered if the batteries were any good.

“Been here a while, huh?” Ellie said softly. They had been speaking quietly since they rolled into town. This entire place made their skin crawl. No survivors. No infected. Nothing. It was damned creepy.

Joel tried the back door, found it locked and boarded over from the inside like the others.

“’Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again’,” Ellie read the store-bought sign taped to the glass inside, above the door handle. “Man, where did she get all these cool signs?”

“Used to be able to order them online. Lots of survivalist types had ‘em. I knew a few who I worked with sometimes. I always thought they were sorta crazy.”

“Did they survive the outbreak?”

“Just about all of ‘em, yeah.”

“Not so crazy then.” Ellie remarked, looking around. She pointed up at a small cluster of windows over the roll-up garage door. They hadn’t been reinforced with wooden planks. “What about those? We could break one out, then you could boost me up there.”

“Not sure that’s a good idea, kid.” Joel said, studying the windows. “What if you got in there and you couldn’t get out?”

“What if we starved to death waiting around out here for these wooden planks to rot?”

Joel took a deep, contemplative breath. “All right. Let’s look around, see if we can scrounge up a few bricks or somethin’.”

“Already got one,” she said, pulling a heavy red rectangle from her backpack.

“Where did you get that?”

“Pittsburgh.” Very smug. “Didn’t know I needed to bring one for you too.”

 

* * *

 

They waited for several minutes. Nothing seemed to be drawn to the sound of the breaking glass. No runners or hunters came barreling down the street at them. Nothing could be heard yelling or screeching from inside the building either.

“Looks clear,” said Joel, propping his 12 gauge against the wall behind him.

“Looks clear,” agreed Ellie, placing her shotgun next to his.

He braced his back against the wall, interlacing his fingers. She wrapped her hands with spare towels from her backpack and stepped into his hands.

“One… Two…” he said. Their bodies tensed together. “Three!”

He vaulted her up, she grabbed at the edge of the window frame, held on tightly as she stepped onto his shoulders. He stood as straight as he could while she balanced atop him, his hands holding the outside of her shins securely, while she cleared the window frame of broken shards.

“Okay! Going up,” she grunted, pulling hard against the edge. He turned, placed his hands under her dangling feet, and pushed up, giving her the needed strength to clear the window and drop inside.

He heard her feet hit the ground, a muffled thump through the thick walls. A long silence followed.

“Ellie!” His voice was a loud hiss.

There was a rattle behind the garage door. Slowly, the barrier began to inch up.

“Come… on…mother… fucker…” She grunted with each word, each shuddering inch, as she slowly cranked the long chain, hand over hand. “Open… you… bastard…”

Joel knelt down, grabbed the edges of the door, lifted it the rest of the way, easily. She let go of the chain as it spun out of her grasp.

“Damn it! You make that look so fucking easy!” She seemed just a little mad at him for showing her up.

“I owe it all to the balls,” he smirked.

“Fuck you and your balls!” she laughed. The door was as open as it could be now, given that the wood across the windows was acting as a doorstop when it reached the chain mechanism. She jammed a long screwdriver in the chain, through the holes in the sprocket, holding it fast. “You better be nicer to me if you expect me to put in a good word on their behalf, you know. That lady could still be around. I’ll bet she already has a pickle jar with your ball’s name on it. Or 'names', I guess, if you have a different name for each one. Do you? Maybe they'll each get their own jar?”

“Christ, I sure hope not. And _stop sayin’ shit_ like that, Ellie. It’s not funny.”

“It is to me.”

Tess used to make the same kind of bad jokes, he thought. Wasn’t any funnier when she pulled that shit either, and I was fucking her. What is it with women and ball jokes?

He panned his flashlight around the dark corners of garage, where the light coming in from the half-open door didn’t quite reach. There were red plastic fuel cans in here – full to the top, big blue barrels that had once been filled with water, several trashcans filled with empty cans of food, laundry baskets loaded with clothing and blankets.

“Can you believe that was all that was holding the door closed?” she asked, pointing to the screwdriver jammed through the chain.

“If you need to get out in a hurry, it’s quicker to pull that out than it is to find the keys to a padlock.” He passed her the double-barreled shotgun.

“Oh! I get it. Damn, this woman is smart,” Ellie said. “She knows all the same tricks you do. I wonder where she went?”

“If she were still here, I think we would have heard from her by now.”

“And your balls haven’t been shot off yet, so we know she’s not hiding in the shadows,” Ellie teased.

“That’s _enough_.”

“Alright, alright,” she groused, smirking. “You men and your balls. So _touchy_.”

“Just look for a map, okay?”

They spread out, flashlights on, shotguns ready.

 

* * *

 

The lock yielded to a shiv.

“Sweet,” Ellie whispered from just behind him. “You gotta teach me how to do that one of these days.”

“You wish,” Joel said, nudging the door to the storage room open slowly. No traps. He half expected to find a shotgun taped to a chair, pointed at the door, a cord tied to its trigger and looped around to the doorknob, ready to blast the first idiot who opened the door. He had heard of similar traps left behind by crazy survivalists.

He surveyed the room, whistled. Felt Ellie nudging against him, trying to squeeze past, anxious see what was so interesting.

“Lemme see!”

He let her slip by. She whistled too.

“Holy smokes, Joel. Look at all this stuff!”

This room was a small treasure trove. Simple metal shelving units that had once held the shop’s inventory of air filters, brake pads, and the like were now bulging with survival gear. Batteries or all sorts, cellophane wrapped bricks of matchbooks, canteens, water purification tablets, air mattresses, first aid kits, rolls of trash bags, flashlights, camp lights, lanterns, replacement mantles for the lanterns, tanks of white gas, ponchos, fold-up mess kits, mugs, cups, compact toothbrushes, break ‘n shake glow sticks… Jesus, there was a little bit of everything in here.

But no food, he realized. He decided to keep that to himself.

“Fuck me, Joel,” said Ellie, awestruck. “This woman was ready for _anything_.”

“Sure looks that way,” he said. “Grab a poncho for yourself. A first aid kit too. And one of those folding mess kits, like the one I’ve got. And see if there are a couple of those mylar emergency survival blankets, one for each of us.”

“My lark? What’s that?”

“Look for thin, silver blankets, probably in flat little packages. They don’t look like much, but they’ll keep you toasty warm at night.”

“Really? Fucking sweet.”

She went to work, looking for the things he had indicated, grabbing what she could find, adding a few more items of her own choosing too, just to make things interesting. There wasn’t a lot of room in her backpack, but she tried to squeeze it in there however she could.

A large metal cabinet was against the rear wall. A heavy padlock sealed it tight.

My last shiv, he thought. But it’s probably worth the risk.

He edged the blade behind the hasp of the lock, trying to find just the right spot to pry.

“Use this, dummy,” she said. She stood next to him, a long tire iron in her hand.

“Where did you get this?”

“From underneath the work bench over there.” She pointed.

In the corner, behind the door they had entered through, a small workbench with a respectable set of tools waited in the gloom, ready to be used.

“Fuckin' sweet,” he said, grinning, repeating her words from earlier. Ellie giggled. She had no idea that he had a special treat in store for her soon.

The hasp popped free with a shriek of tearing metal. They both winced. In the quiet confines of this shop, on the edge of this ghost town, it was the loudest noise they had heard all day.

He swung the set of doors open, hoping for good loot.

Boxes of ammo were stacked across the shelves. They had been carefully sorted, which would make searching them a breeze.

“Dibs on any Beretta bullets,” she said, dropping to one knee and searching the lower shelves.

“Look for .32 ACP or .32 Auto,” he said, beginning his own search for .45 ammo. “Either one will work in your Beretta. Fill every magazine you have.”

“Gotcha.”

She hummed softly to herself as she perused the labels on the ends of the many boxes. It was a rock song he wasn’t familiar with.

“You're making wars. You're breaking doors,” she sang under her breath, “And now you're on the floor…”

He tuned her out.

“I really don't care. I really don't care,” she crooned quietly, humming the guitar riffs where necessary, “I know you're tryin' to get somewhere.”

He tuned her out even harder. As hard as he could.

There was only half a box of .45 ACP for his Colt, but twenty rounds were better than none.

“Three boxes, Joel! I found _three boxes_!” she almost squealed with excitement, holding the heavy, oblong rectangles in her hands, displaying them for him proudly.

“Good girl! Start looking for shotgun ammo too. We’re both running low.”

“’Kay.” She scooted over to the far end of the middle shelf with the fat, square boxes of shotgun shells. “12 gauge and 28 gauge, right?”

“That’s right.” He stepped back and over a bit. Her head was too close to his crotch for comfort, not that it was the sort of thing she would have noticed, so lost in her quest for ammo was she.

Wish I didn’t notice it, but then I’m a lot older than her, he thought. Must be nice to be so innocent, never having awkward moments like this.

_Wow. His dick is just right there. Oh man… Don’t look. Don’t look and don’t think about it, Ellie. Be good, okay? _

_I’m trying, Inner Voice. But it’s not easy. His dick is right. Fucking. T here!_

She was working her way to the middle of the shelf, inching her way box by box towards his crotch again. He decided that retreat was the wisest option.

He stepped away, knelt down, began to dig though this pack, trying to find all the empty .45 magazines that had been rattling around in there. Holding eight rounds apiece, he should have enough ammo to fill two and a half of them.

Near the bottom of his pack, he found the special gift he had been hanging onto since Pittsburgh. He pulled it out and walked over to the workbench. She didn’t notice him leave. The sheer variety of shotgun ammo was mesmerizing to her.

“Turkey Load… Quail Load… Rabbit… Fox…” She read the labels, mystified that anyone would ever need such variety. Weren’t all shotgun pellets the same? “Geese… Ducks, high… Duck, low… Zero zero… Zero zero zero… Hey, Joel, what’s with all these zeroes?”

“Double ought and triple ought buckshot. Real messy stuff.”

“You want some?”

“Yes, I do. Any and all 12 gauge you find. Put it in my pack.”

“’Kay… And might I interest you in a few ‘slugs’? And might I also ask you what slugs are?”

“A slug is a giant bullet. Instead of firing a bunch of pellets, the shell shoots one big hunk of lead instead.”

“Wow,” she was holding a slug in her hand, examining it. The tip of the bulbous metal round protruded slightly from the lip of the blue plastic shell. “That’s a big bullet.”

“Hell yeah, it is,” he agreed, fishing spare parts out of the small leather bag in which he kept them stored. “At close range, a steel slug will punch right through the engine block of a car.”

“So, like… One of these would blow a man’s balls right the fuck off?” She snickered, hoping to make him squirm again. “I can see why she has these. Only four left though. I guess she shot a lot of balls off before we got here, huh?”

“Knock that shit off, Ellie. _I mean it this time_.”

She giggled. Mission accomplished.

“I’m telling you, Ellie. You keep making those jokes, and I’ll keep this for myself.”

“Keep what?” she was curious now, and trotted over to see what he was working on.

He was wiping something off, inspecting it under the light of the battery-powered lamp mounted to the bench.

“Found this back in Pittsburgh, took it off the guy I got your gun from,” he blew on it once, and handed it to her.

She took it. It looked like a giant pistol magazine and said as much.

“Yep. It’s a high-capacity magazine for your Beretta. Holds thirteen rounds instead of six. The follower was sorta tweaked, which is why it jammed on him,” Joel indicated the tiny plate that attached to the spring inside, pushing the bullets up. “But it wasn’t bad. I hung onto it, hoping that I’d get the chance to fix it. Go on. Give it a try.”

Eagerly, she removed the current magazine from the Beretta and replaced it with this new one. It stuck out from the grip by a good two inches or more. It would be awkward to carry around like this, so she decided that she would load this only if she needed to, on special occasions when lots of shooting was required.

“Fucking _sweet_ , Joel. Thanks.” She only barely resisted the urge to hug him, busying herself with swapping out the extended magazine for the original one instead.

“Glad you like it. Now come on, help me find some ammo for the Winchester. Look for boxes labeled 30-06, that’s what it’s called. Some .357 for my revolver too.”

“Okay. She didn’t have any 28 gauge, by the way.”

“Not surprised, really. 28 gauge is kinda rare.”

“Maybe when we find this lady, we can ask her where she found all of this stuff. Maybe there’s some 28 gauge somewhere in town.”

“Maybe.”

“Let me do the talking, though. We don’t want her shooting your balls off out of habit. She probably does that a lot, you know?“

“You want me to take that magazine back?”

“Fine. I’ll behave.”

“That’d be a nice change of pace.”

“Pffft.”

 

* * *

 

“Doesn’t seem fair,” Ellie said, her eyes downcast. She had expected something more than this. Something dramatic, tragic, or noteworthy at least. This was just so… ordinary.

“She ran out of food. Probably ran out of nerve too,” Joel said. He rested a hand on Ellie’s shoulder, sensing that she needed something more from him at this moment than just words. It wasn’t an easy thing for him to do, to reach out like this. But this kid was… a friend? Maybe? She was hurting, that was for sure. He tried hard to make the effort for her.

“So the last thing left to eat was a bullet.” Her words were soft, hoarse. She closed her eyes.

“Looks like, yeah.” Joel patted her small shoulder one more time. He didn’t know what else to say, didn’t know how much Ellie had built this woman up in her mind, didn’t know how desperately Ellie needed to believe that a woman could make it alone in this world, if she had to. “Spend too much time holed up in the same place for too long, and the world outside the walls becomes so… scary… you almost can’t bear the thought of steppin’ out into it again. A safe place can become a prison if you’re alone.”

“Yeah.” The words were barely more than a whisper. She clenched her small fists. Her eyes were screwed shut. She couldn’t bear to look at the scene. Couldn’t find the strength to walk away.

_I don’t ever want to be alone. Don’t ditch me, Joel. Don’t leave me alone. Like her._

The map of Ohio was folded up in his hand. In a few minutes, he was going to take her to the garage’s front counter, and teach her how to read a map. He thought it would be a good skill for her to know. He had no idea how much it would truly mean to her. With a sense of where she was in this strange world, so far beyond the walls she had grown up sheltered behind, she would finally start to sleep a little better at night. She might never have a true understanding of what Ohio was, but she would at least know where she was within the artificial lines that defined its borders. She wouldn’t be adrift, she would be _somewhere_. Joel was about to give her some small measure of piece of mind. She would never know how to repay him for that. He would never realize that she felt the need to.

His hand guided her gently, as they left the small office together, closing the door behind them, and leaving the unnamed woman in silence.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The thing Michelle wanted to see more of in The Last of Us (other than a steamy sex scene between Joel and Tess) was more women. Not counting the infected you fight, they almost don’t exist outside of Boston. According to what I’ve read on Reddit and 4chan (and everyone knows you can trust everything you read on the internet), this was due to technical issues. There just wasn’t any memory left to code them into the game. Given all the post-pandemic women survivors on display in the big art book Dark Horse put out, I assume this is probably the case. The PS3 was just too full for any more NPC models.
> 
> Since I’m writing this for Michelle (she gets the new chapters more than a month in advance before I post it here, in case you were wondering, and she also gets more sex scenes that you guys do), I decided to add the two things she really wants to read in about in this story. More women and lots of sex scenes. (Seriously, I had to edit out three of them so that Flying To Wyoming wasn't just a “sex scene every other chapter” sort of read). 
> 
> So far, we’ve had Kristi Chau in chapter one, the woman traveling with the two men and the pair of kids in chapter four, the various happy women Ellie spied on in chapter five, Tess in chapter seven, Tala Villanueva in chapter ten, and now this poor, unnamed soul. Riley will make a lengthy appearance soon too. I hope the rest of you aren’t put off by the gratuitous amounts of OC estrogen soaking into this story, but I can only do so much with a story with one living Ellie and one dead Tess. Maria doesn’t show up until they reach Jackson, so I’ve got to sprinkle a few OC chicks into the narrative here and there.
> 
> Also, for the record, I’d like to say that I know mastodons and mammoths aren’t the same animal. They’re only distantly related. Ellie made the mistake, not me. Send your corrections regarding the proper identification of Pleistocene megafauna to her. (But don’t be too hard on the kid. She’s more into dinosaurs anyway). ;-)
> 
> For the very curious, the song Ellie is singing to herself is ‘I Get Wet’ by Andrew W. K. Save your angry letters! I will defend her (and my) taste in music in a future chapter. ;-)
> 
> Check back in a few days for the action-packed shootout that is Chapter Twelve: Troubled Waters.


	12. Troubled Waters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here it is: the big, chapter-length action sequence for Flying To Wyoming. Enjoy!

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**  
 **Chapter 12 – Troubled Waters**

 

The road here wasn’t so bad. They were averaging about twenty-five miles per hour or so. Much better than they had done on the stretch of U.S. 36 between Johnstown and Sunbury. That cracked and split mess of a road almost brought them to a halt more than once. Dead cars everywhere and fissures wide enough to almost drop the whole bike into. Ten miles an hour, that was his best guess. Ten miles they had traveled during midday, and it took them almost an hour to do that. Good thing that garage in Johnstown was packed with cans of gasoline. The tank was full. Even the emergency jug stashed in the helmet compartment at the back of the bike was filled to the top.

That was one damn creepy ghost town, he thought.

Not a soul, living or infected, to be found anywhere in the whole damn place. He wondered if that’s what had driven the woman to despair. Or had there been others? People who didn’t evacuate, or people who found the town later? Had she ran them off? Or killed them off? Either way, Ellie had taken the death of a woman who she had never met, who had left this earth six or seven years ago, and who was most likely the damned unpleasant sort, pretty hard. She didn’t like the wacko loner Bill very much. Why on earth did she think she and this woman would have become such fast friends?

What sorts of thought go through that kid’s head, he wondered. She’s hard to figure out.

The blasted-out town of Sunbury had at least been a distraction for her. It looked like World War III had been fought in that little town. Buildings blown apart, houses burned to the ground, bullet holes and blast craters everywhere. But not a single army tank or truck. It was as if both sides had fought over the town until there was no town left to fight over, then they had just packed up all their stuff, collected all their dead, and each went their separate ways.

On the seat behind him, Ellie suddenly became very excited as they ambled past a White Castle restaurant on the side of the highway. There was also a Cracker Barrel, a Denny’s, and a BP station, but she had no interest in any of them. She only had eyes for the White Castle, and pointed to it excitedly.

“Joel! Look! A fucking White Castle!" She laughed and the sound of it made him smile.

Good lord. What sort of oddball thoughts go through this goofy kid’s head, he wondered for the second time in as many minutes.

He had no idea why she was so thrilled to see the place. She didn’t really know, either. Some of the older students had secretly watched some movie about a White Castle in the dorm’s AV room one night, after lights out. She remembered them talking about it, remembered the name of the place. But she didn’t really know what all the fuss was about. She was just happy to finally see one. Like the giant erections in Bill’s gay porno magazine, this was another interesting thing to check off on her sightseeing list. She kept the list in her mind, not daring to write it down. It was a varied and exciting list and she didn’t think anyone would understand it but her.

Joel had his own memories of White Castle, a rather nice one in the memorably named town of Citrus Heights, California.

What had her name been? The one that Tommy had his eye on? He cast his mind back, trying hard to remember the woman. Thick, black hair. Eyes so dark they were almost black too. Light brown skin. Tiny waist. Round ass. Big tits. Tommy liked his girls with big knockers.

Joel smiled.

America, he remembered. That was her name. She said her parents were so thrilled to get to this country from Argentina that they named her America and her kid sister Liberty. America Esparza. How on earth could I have forgotten you, girl? I was twenty-four, Tommy was eighteen. You were… nineteen, I think.

Man, Tommy really had his heart set on that one. But just like Tommy, he had to think about things too much, took too long to make his move. He wanted to wait for the right moment, slide in with exactly the right words on his lips. Smooth, that was how Tommy operated.

But I never had time for that crap, Joel smirked. Those who dare, win, as Freddy used to say, back when the crew was still together. Right before somebody put a bullet in the cocky son of a bitch.

I swooped right in and stole her from Tommy before he’d even had a chance to talk to her. Baby brother had to settle for little sister Liberty instead. Not that Liberty was such a bad thing to settle for. Not quite as tall as America, almost as pretty, longer hair, and her tits were even larger than those of her generously endowed big sister. And that’s all Tommy was really after, right?

And sexy little Liberty swore she was eighteen. I had my doubts, but Tommy was willing to believe. Baby brother could summon up a lot of faith when he needed to.

We convinced them to leave the White Castle with us, two perfect strangers from Texas. Told them they needed to hop on our Harleys and show us around the town. Made it as far as the beach of some place called Folsom Lake, as I recall. Citrus heights was more than a hundred miles from the Pacific, but those girls were all worked up and ready to get their curves into some bikinis. Couldn’t wait to show themselves off for us. Heck, we couldn’t wait to see them strutting around in those little things either. After a few hours of splashing around and making out, it was back into town, to a Best Western, back to a shared room, which was a little messed up, I guess. But then again, we were brothers and they were sisters, so we made it work. Then it was back on the highway the next day, on our way to the ocean, trying to see as much as we could before we had to head back to Texas. We promised to call. I threw away the numbers.

Tommy held a grudge about me stealing that woman from him for a solid year after that, Joel remembered. Didn’t see what the big deal was. I was a single dad with a seven-year-old girl waiting for me back at my mom’s. I hardly ever got out, didn’t get to date half as much as Tommy did. That kid got more tail before the outbreak than I ever will in my life. But even with all those notches on his bedpost, he’s probably still pissed that I knocked boots with America Esparza and he didn’t.

Wonder if that’s something else I’m going to have to eat crow about before he’ll take this goofy kid off my hands? Whatever it takes, I suppose. I can’t keep this girl around for much longer. She’s starting to find a place in my life and that’s just gonna make shit… complicated. Adorable as she is, loveable as she is, she’s got to go.

He blinked his eyes, not liking where his mind was going with this.

Pretty as she is, devoted as she is, he thought with no small amount of guilt about the thoughts she had stirred up in him at the motel, I’ve got get rid of her. And real fucking soon. I don’t need these thought in my head. Not about a damn teenager.

Sorry, kid, he thought glumly. You’ll be happier with Tommy anyway. You’ll see. He’s a talker, like you. He’ll answer all your weird questions. He’ll tell you lots of stories. He’ll laugh at your bad jokes. You’ll like him. You’ll see.

God, he thought, shaking his head, squinting behind his amber shooter’s glasses, why the hell was I thinking about America Esparza? Why am I thinking about _any of this shit_? That crap’s in the past and there ain’t no point in thinking about better days that ain’t coming around again. _Ever_.

It’s this damn kid, he thought and grimaced. She just pokes and prods, always asking questions. She’s got me digging so much stuff up lately to keep her entertained that all the rest of it seems to think it’s time to come up into the sunlight too.

You’re sweet, Ellie. And cute as a button. But I’ll be glad to have you in my dust soon.

Ahead of him, he saw two bridges spanning a great river, or possibly a lake. The sign pointing out this natural wonder for tourists like himself was long gone. Only two metal poles stuck out of the ground, marking the place where the sign had once been. Heavy forests ringed the highway and the water on all sides.

Alum Creek Lake. The words came to him from studying the map earlier, before they’d left the garage. Pretty sure this is Alum Creek Lake. Sure is pretty.

At the edge of the bridge, where the concrete and steel structure met the grass and blacktop, in the same westbound lanes as them, Joel could see what looked to be the bed of a pickup truck, amputated from its vehicle and mounted to a frame made of scrap metal bars, welded together haphazardly, a pair of axles and four wheels fitted underneath it.

Two men stood in front of it, shirtless, side by side, looking around nervously.

“What in the hell is this?” Joel wondered aloud, too softly for Ellie to hear him over the winds and behind her helmet. He eased back on the throttle just a bit, buying himself a few more seconds before he would have to deal with this strange event.

Why the hell would they drag such a heavy contraption down the road like this?

He had closed the distance by nearly half now. A decision would have to be made soon. Neither man made any threatening moves. They were still pretty small at this distance, but he couldn’t see any guns in their hands.

There were several boxes and crates piled inside the ramshackle trailer, an old tarp pulled taut across the top and tied down with scraps of different ropes knotted together to make longer pieces.

The men weren’t only shirtless, he realized, they were almost entirely nude. Clad mostly in a series of wide leather belts strapped across their shoulders and around their hips. They made no effort to hide their naked genitals. Probably couldn’t even if they wanted to. Their hands were behind their backs, most likely bound tight. Heavy leather straps connected them to the wagon.

Those two aren’t pulling that wagon, Joel realized. They’re being _made_ to pull it! They’re goddamn pack animals!

Ellie had noticed it too. She was already checking it off her secret mental list. She had just added it to the list before crossing it off, but that was her little secret too.

“What the fuck is their deal?” she shouted in his ear, curious and repulsed all at once.

She’d heard the older girls joke about this sort of stuff too. Rumor was some of the older instructors in the school played games like this. Ellie had never believed them, never thought it was real. Certainly never expected to see something like this with her own eyes. S and M, one of the girls had called it. What the letters stood for, she wasn’t sure.

The two men were much closer now, barely fifty yards. The both looked with wide eyes at an area just behind a rusted minivan at the side of the road near them and their wagon.

“Fuck!” yelled Joel. “Ellie! On our right!”

But she didn’t hear him. She had her earbuds in, her Walkman playing loudly, listening to an old mix tape a friend hade made for her back in Boston. It seemed like half a lifetime ago she had received this gift.

“What?” she shouted, her fingers reaching for the tape player resting snugly inside the interior pocket of her denim jacket, fumbling for the little wheel that controlled the volume.

Joel knew that there were men up ahead, hiding behind the minivan and probably more out of sight who knew where else. Running a gauntlet was too dangerous under any circumstances, and seeing those two poor souls told him what sort of hell was in store for Ellie and him if they were captured.

Driven by desperation, he jinked the bike to the left, as sharply as he could, leaving the blacktop and plunging into the tall grass strip that separated the westbound lanes from the eastbound. For half a second there was nothing under the spinning wheels but air.

“JESUS, JOEL!” Ellie shrieked, confused and shocked, her stomach doing flip-flops as they sailed through the air into the tall green blades below. She clutched at his backpack straps with both hands. The impact shook them both, rattling their spines and knocking her earbuds loose.

From the corner of his eye, he could see two men coming out from behind the old minivan, several more emerged from other places of concealment along the bridge that he and Ellie had been riding towards. The other bridge, the eastbound one, looked to be clear of gunmen.

Thank Christ they didn’t have more time to set up a proper ambush, he thought. Probably heard us coming from the other side of those trees, just around the bend back there. Not enough time to spread out and cover all the exits.

“ON! OUR! RIGHT!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.

Ellie understood him this time. Her music was still blasting loudly, but no longer directed straight into her ears.

“Party crasher, panty snatcher…” the words slipped out of the dislodged earbuds rattling around inside her helmet loud enough that Joel could make out the lyrics. “Call me up if you a gangsta.”

She swung her shotgun around, just as the first bullets began to whistle past her. One of the men had a double-barreled shotgun of his own. He aimed it slightly ahead of the bike, just as it began to climb up, out of the grassy trough. The spray of pellets exploded the tall grass just ahead of the front tire, sending bright green blades tumbling everywhere. They fluttered in the air around them as Joel wrangled the unhappy bike across the off-road environment it was never meant for and back towards the pavement it loved. The smell of freshly cut grass wafted around her and she wished she had time to appreciate it.

Ellie returned fire, triggering off both barrels in rapid succession. A cluster of pellets splattered into the man, peppering his body with small bloody wounds from his right upper thigh to his lower belly. Too dispersed of a spread at this distance, it wasn’t enough to kill him outright, but it was more than sufficient to send him screaming to the ground in front of the two naked, belted men. They tried to step back, panicking, but their leashes held them fast to the wagon.

The man nearest to them fired a bolt-action rifle at the bike, but the shot went wide. It had been years since the man had shot at anything moving so fast.

Ellie tried to reload her shotgun, but gave up on it when the climbing Honda’s back tire made contact with the hard road surface, barking as the traction slipped, making the bike buck to the side. The ammunition she had been trying to load into the gun flew out of her hand as she reached for Joel to steady herself. The precious sea green shells clattered across the highway in their wake, lost for good.

“Shit, Joel!” she shouted, dropping the shotgun, letting it swing freely from its rope sling. “Don’t make me fall off, you ass!”

He gunned the engine, either not hearing or not listening. More bullets sailed past her. One struck the pavement just ahead of her, bouncing up and lodging itself in the little fold-down armrest just below her right breast. She yelped and tried to recoil from it, but there was nowhere to go that wasn’t on the bike, and this bike was the only place she wanted to be.

She reached back, drew her little Beretta from the waistband of her jeans. Seven rounds in it. Another six in the magazine in her other back pocket. Eleven rounds handy. That’s all. She wished the big new magazine Joel had given her was back there too, instead of safely in her backpack, like the treasure it was. But how could she have foreseen a moment like this? Irrationally, she hoped he wouldn’t be mad about it later, hoped he wouldn’t think she didn’t like the gift or something.

Several men along the other bridge were firing at them now. She capped off all seven rounds, hitting nothing but hoping to discourage them. A few took cover. She smiled. With deft fingers, she released the empty magazine, stuffed it into one of the cups of her bra – magazines were too valuable to leave lying on the side of the road where she would never be able to recover them. She fished the other magazine out of her back pocket and slapped it into the pistol.

They roared past an old Pontiac Sunfire, the top of the car’s roof sliding along inches below her outstretched hands as she began to return fire again. The wind and sound compressed around them as they passed. Though she would never admit it, Ellie found the experience dreadful. Too fast. Too much noise. She had never been through anything like this before. How fucking fast were they going?

Joel was already working the math on that.

There were too many guns over there. Not enough dead cars over here to use as cover. They had to get across and away, as fast as possible. A stray bullet struck the Honda, shattering the rear view mirror inches in front of Joel’s right hand. He gritted his teeth, leaned forward as much as he could, and twisted the throttle open all the way. With a roar of 120 unleashed Japanese horses, the red motorcycle leapt forward like a rocket. Kristi Chau sure knew how to keep her husband’s old Gold Wing in fine running condition.

Ellie had emptied the second magazine to much the same result as the first. She couldn’t get to another reload without taking off her backpack, and at this speed, that seemed a suicidal notion. They were really flying now, roaring around dead cars, weaving crazily, almost halfway across the bridge. Her black denim jacket fanned out behind her, blowing in the roaring wind like the wings of a raven.

With no easy place to put the little pistol, she dropped it down the front of her undershirt. The longer black thermal top layered under her dog paw t-shirt was tucked into her pants so it wouldn’t hang down behind the top shirt, making a perfect pocket to catch the Beretta. The hot metal of the empty gun was warm against her belly.

A shotgun blast exploded the window of the car they were speeding past. Glass fragments rained across her helmet in a clattering spray. A stray pellet from the blast grazed the back of her helmet, scoring a shallow groove into the metallic red finish. She didn’t hear it against the noisy rain of the glass. Another pellet struck Joel in the forearm, a few inches up from his elbow. He grunted but kept the throttle open. His face was bleeding from several shallow cuts.

Ellie saw a man running along the edge of the other bridge, maybe twenty yards ahead of them, across the gap yawning down to the water below. In his hands there was a compact machine pistol fitted with a long magazine. She had never seen an Ingram MAC-10 before, but the wicked shape of the thing told her that it had to be trouble.

She tugged the big Taurus .357 revolver from the back of Joel’s pants, thumbed the hammer back and fired at the man, hoping to pin him before he could unleash a hailstorm of bullets at them. She had to pull the trigger with two fingers.

Six times the revolver spat flame. Six times the bullets went wide. The bike was just going too fast, the gun was just too heavy and unwieldy for her small hands.

The man raised the evil looking, black brick of a gun, bracing it low against his hip with a funny, flimsy looking little foldout stock. He held it firm at the front with the aid of a small leather strap affixed below the barrel. He knew from experience that it was going to kick like hell.

“We will never be, never be anything but loud and nitty gritty, dirty, little freaks,” the woman sang inside her helmet, the earbuds bouncing around loosely under her ears.

“JOEL!” She screamed. She didn’t know what else to do.

A shower of sparkling brass erupted from the gun, fire and smoke lancing forth, reaching for them spitefully with jagged fingers of flame. The bullets arrived half a heartbeat before the sound did. The gun cycled so fast she couldn’t hear individual shots being fired. Instead it sounded like a single, long, buzzsaw roar, chewing away at the air between the bike and him.

Sizzling hot rounds screamed through the air all around them. The guard rail to her right danced with sparks, dents appearing in the surface of the steel like the strikes of a thousand ringing, invisible hammers. A perfectly round hole appeared in the corner of the windscreen in front of Joel. Another one appeared, just above the instrument panel. The AM/FM radio took a direct hit, two buttons shattering into plastic shards. Another bullet struck the chrome sleeve of the exhaust pipe below her heel. She felt the vibration of the impact. A puff of canvas and fabric burst from Joel’s backpack, it hung there like a bit of dandelion fluff for a split second, before getting swept away by the wind howling outside her helmet. Two rounds passed through her fluttering denim wings. Another passed directly in front of her visor. She could see the air rippling in its wake, twisted and distorted by its passing. She never realized how slowly her eyes moved when she was blinking.

They were almost even with him now. How far from him, she wondered. Fifteen feet? Ten? She felt as though she could reach out and touch him. She could see the fury on his face. The Ingram had never failed him before. That’s why he saved it only for special occasions. She could see him seeing her, felt the uncomfortable sensation of his eyes on her body, on the t-shirt pressed down by the wind tightly across her small, firm breasts. She shuddered. This day was full of things she had never experienced before. She felt very vulnerable and tried to push the darker aspects of the feeling from her mind. Every woman in this world knew that sensation of unspeakable dread, but at fourteen, it was a new feeling to her.

He pulled another long magazine from his cracked and ratty leather jacket and began to reload. He grinned lustfully. Either way, his eyes promised, it was going to end in violence for her today.

Ellie dropped the empty revolver down the front of her shirt, winced as the hammer of the hot gun snagged on her bra. She shook the Taurus loose with her left hand, feeling it tumble down her chest, reached down and forward with the other hand to draw Joel’s big Colt semiautomatic from the nylon holster on his hip. The barrel of the revolver was hot against her belly button, the handle of the Colt cold in her hand. She had to kill this man. She had never wanted someone dead with such ferocity.

More bullets and buckshot were still sailing their way, courtesy of the other men receding rapidly behind them, but she only cared about the man with the machine pistol. Joel was weaving around the scattered cars on the bridge, trying to keep something, anything, between them and the man with the Ingram. The cars hurtled towards them at speeds Ellie had never experienced in her life. She was terrified but clenched her teeth and worked hard to ignore the cold fear in her gut. A Dodge Durango whipped past her so near that the denim flapping behind her struck the antenna, bending it over sharply.

The man had reloaded, was angling to get another volley off before they were too far away for his short-ranged gun to have any chance of hitting them. Ellie switched the safety off and leveled Joel’s gun at him. For that one snapshot of a moment, he was dead center in her sights. He knew it too. His creepy smile flickered. She bared her teeth and pulled the trigger of the Colt.

Nothing.

She didn’t know about single action semi-automatics. Didn’t know that the hammer needed to be cocked before the gun would fire. Her sole experience with pistols was with her little double-action Beretta. Pull the trigger and a bullet came out, no matter what, just so long as it was loaded. She worked the stiff slide of the Colt, grunting with the effort. This was a lot more gun that she was used to. She didn’t notice the perfectly good bullet being dumped out as she cycled a new round into the chamber. The hammer was cocked now.

She ripped off the remaining seven rounds as fast as the pistol would cycle, sending bullets flying in his general direction. One struck the passenger’s window of the old Chevrolet he stood alongside, only inches from him. He didn’t flinch. This was his last chance to kill the pair and he had been shot at plenty in his life. He took his time aiming at them, maybe thirty feet away from him now, still within easy range of his gun.

Her borrowed pistol was empty. She wanted to look away, but she wouldn’t let herself.

This was it.

“JOOOEELLLL!!!” She didn’t even remember deciding to scream his name, but heard it escape her lips nonetheless.

Braced from the shoulder this time, the compact machine pistol roared at them as they raced away from the fingers of flame. Cued by her timely scream, thinking it to be a warning, Joel maneuvered them towards an old blue Ford F-350, parked very close to the far lane of the bridge, slipping around to the far side of it just as the bullets arrived.

The truck’s windows exploded from the barrage. Holes appeared as if by magic across the length of the vehicle. A thousand invisible hammers struck unseen anvils. Sparks and fragments doused them as they squeezed between the truck and the guardrail. She felt like they were caught in that tornado from the Wizard Of Oz movie, a storm of destruction swirling all around that threatened to consume them. It was too much. She looked away from the disintegrating Ford, towards the other side of the bridge. She instantly regretted it.

Joel had only barely managed to fit the bike between the railing and the truck, finding a perfectly sized pocket of safety away from the reach of the gunman. Mere inches to spare on either side of the bike, the engine was deafening in this enclosed space. The wind sounded compressed and unnatural. The waters of the lake below could be seen beyond the blur of the safety rail rushing by two inches from her knee. It seemed as though they might go over at any minute. One bump, one piece of road debris, one little mistake on Joel’s part and that pretty blue water would come charging up to meet them, swallowing them up in a single wet gulp. Ellie mewled in fear. She looked at the back of his head, his short hair whipping wildly in the wind. Any single part of this nightmare she could handle, but all of it at once? It was too much. She was overwhelmed and disgusted by how weak she felt. Why couldn’t she be stronger, like him?

Suddenly they were through it, into the open air of the road again. Seconds later, they were across the bridge, beyond the reach of the man in the leather jacket, beyond the range of his hateful little gun, beyond all their guns, away from the fearful body of water, flying to Jackson once more.

Inside the safe, private space of her helmet, Ellie began to cry, glad that Joel could neither see nor hear her. She knew he would detest her for being so fucking weak.

She opened his backpack and dropped the Colt into it. The other guns clanking around against the skin of her quivering stomach would have to wait for later. She blinked her eyes clear of tears, but more came on their heels. She felt miserable. She hated being scared like this. Especially now that the danger was behind them.

She wrapped her hands around the straps of his backpack, tried to breathe normally, told herself to stop crying, willed her body to relax. Her limbs began to tremble as the leftover adrenaline began to have its way with her muscles. She rested her head against her pack, tried to siphon just a little strength from him, tried to ignore the corroded heaps blasting past them, distorting wind and sound as the Gold Wing flew low, moving at such an incredible speed she could scarcely conceive of it.

She became aware that the woman singing inside her helmet was still encouraging her to be awesome. Was that song still playing? How was that possible? They’d been on that bridge for hours, hadn’t they?

“So if you're too school for cool… And you're treated like a fool… You can choose to let it go…”

Ellie reached inside her coat and stopped the tape. That would be time to feel awesome later. Now she just wanted to be scared, because as much as she hated it, that felt more honest to her somehow. In a few minutes, she would be glad to be alive. Within the hour, she would be back to her cocky self – the real Ellie, as she thought of it. But for now, she just wanted to come to terms with her own wretched fear. She wished he would slow down.

A few miles later, he did. A few more miles beyond that, just outside of the small city of Delaware, he would stop the Gold Wing and check on both her and the bike. He checked on her first and she couldn’t explain how grateful she felt. She had never been any adult’s first priority. She realized that she might be coming to love him. She wasn’t sure that any adult had ever loved her, other than her mother, who had died just hours after bringing her into this world. She prayed that her long-gone mother was watching, that Ellie had made Anna Williams proud today, hoped that her mom could still see such things, feel such things, wherever she was now. At that moment, Ellie desperately needed to believe that Anna was up there, still watching and loving her orphaned daughter. She regretted the words she had said to Sam, painfully, shamefully aware of how cruel they must have sounded to his ears in the hours before his death.

When Joel looked her over – every inch of her, it felt like – his arm still bleeding from the pellet that had struck him, needing to see with his own worried eyes, eyes set in a scratched and bleeding face, that she was unhurt, that she had ridden through that hell of flying metal and glass without a scratch to show for it, he would never suspect that she had been crying. It would be her secret. She kept it with pride. She even managed to stand straight, rest her hands on her hips, and put on her best cocky smile. She was tough and she needed him to know that.

Her mother already knew. Had known it from the start.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suspect some of you might prefer less action and more bonding, but I had a burning need to put a big, long, exciting gunfight / motorcycle sequence in this story. 
> 
> The timeline I cobbled together assumes that Joel is six years older than Tommy. For Tommy’s 18th birthday ride across the country, Joel would have been 24 and Sarah 7 (assuming that she was born when Joel was 16, going on 17 – he started young, I guess).
> 
> One of the songs that Riley included on Ellie’s mix tape? Pink’s “Raise Your Glass.”
> 
> Did you notice that there was no interior monologue for Ellie in this one? I’ve been relying on it so heavily up until this point that I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could get by without it for a little while.
> 
> Check back in a few days when Joel puts on his gasmask, and he and Ellie kill a few clickers and share an awkward moment of bonding in Chapter Thirteen: The Feminine Abyss.


	13. The Feminine Abyss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie leads Joel deep into the corridors beneath an abandoned sports stadium on a very important quest.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 13 – The Feminine Abyss**

 

The clicker struggled in Joel’s grip. If he didn’t get the shiv into its brain soon, it would get loose from him, and that was something he probably wouldn’t survive, not in a dark, enclosed space like this. The blade was in his hand, but the thing kept trying to reach back for him, the fungus-covered arm flailing, blocking his attack. The lenses of his gasmask began to fog up from the exertion. His arm ached where an hour earlier Ellie had used her tweezers to pull out a stray buckshot pellet.

In the bobbing light of his lamp, he saw a small stalker in a ratty old tracksuit rounding the corner ahead, beneath the cartoon man painted on the wall, the one Ellie liked so much. The cartoon man was grumpy, clad in a red robe with a funny little hat, he watched them rob his stadium with a dour expression, one eyebrow cocked dramatically. The stalker paused in front of the cartoon, drawn to the light playing across it. The monster whirled, hearing the grunts Joel tried to muffle inside the stifling mask. It spotted him and broke into a run.

Ellie, hiding behind a trashcan near the water fountain, jumped out, switchblade ready, and tackled the monster to the ground as it passed her on its way to him. It had been a woman once, one not much bigger than her. She kept it pinned beneath her, sitting on top of it, holding it down with her knees, stabbing at the back of its head as it thrashed about.

The clicker in Joel’s arms finally died with a wheezing rattle, most of half a pair of scissors jutting from the back of its skull. He lowered its still slightly twitching body to the floor of the hallway. It jerked a few more times on the cold tiles, the last of the desperate spasms passing through the corrupted flesh, the last commands of the cordyceps that had long ago defiled the man being received by fluttering muscles. Mercifully, it finally shuddered and lay still.

“Jeez, Louise!” Ellie whispered, jogging up to him. “Were you taking your sweet time with that one just to see if I’d get scared enough to shit my pants? Because it almost worked.”

“Gave me a lot of trouble, kiddo. What can I tell you?”

“I only have one pair of clean pants left, Joel. Just FYI, buddy.”

Joel pulled the shiv from the brain of the dead clicker, checked the condition of the blade. It looked like it might have one more use in it. Maybe. It could be hard to tell with these things.

“Joel, have you ever considered getting a real knife? Something not made from broken scissors and duct tape?” she teased, easing close to him in the dark, hazy gloom underneath the sports stadium. This place was giving her the creeps. Outside, in the fresh air, it would be dark soon and she knew they needed to hurry, but she couldn’t resist taking a few seconds to interact with him whenever the opportunity arose.

“I got one,” he said defensively, pulling a small brown and silver folding knife from the hidden recesses of his jeans pocket. “See?”

She swiped it from him with a deft gesture. “Lemme see.”

“Give that back, you little shit.”

“Hang on. I wanna see it.”

She turned it over in her hands. It was quite small, with a hard, brown resin handle. A small sliver oval in the handle read ‘Old Timer.’ There was a small, swing-out blade mounted on one end, tucked into the handle by means of a clever hinge. The other end had a similar mounting for a larger blade, but that one had been snapped off at the base. Ellie had only seen a few folding knives in her time, cheap ones the upper class boys traded for smokes and stuff. But this one was old, and probably very nice once upon a time.

“How’d you break this blade, ‘Old Timer’?” she asked, placing special emphasis on the last two words, grinning at him deviously.

“Snapped it off in the head of a kid who wouldn’t give me my damn knife back,” he said, keeping his voice low and the threat obviously fake. “Real tragic, that’s what it was.”

“Ha ha,” she quipped, handing the knife back. She winked at him, her face not obscured by the need for a gas mask. Cordyceps immunity did have a few advantages. “Does it bother you? That my knife is bigger? Because I could see how that would bother a man like you. Knife envy. Very common, I hear.”

“Shut up, Ellie. Why the hell did you drag me down here?” He waved a hand in the general direction of the hallway they were in. Unlike the overgrown locker rooms, the spores were almost non-existent in this part of the corridor running underneath the stadium, but he left his mask on, just in case.

“Found something when we were looking for supplies in that storeroom around the corner. Right in here,” she said, motioning him to follow, leading him into a pitch-black room on the other side of the water fountain.

Her light threw the space into sharp relief, with shadows deep enough to fall into and get lost forever. Joel followed her closely, and they entered the room together.

“What the hell are we doin’ in the ladies bathroom, Ellie?” his low voice echoed around the empty space. Rows of pink stall doors stood open. Across from them, a large mirror on the wall reflected the light of their lamps, doubling it, bathing the room in pink glow that he didn’t find nearly as charming as she did.

“I need help going. See, I need to pee but it’s dark in here and I got scared,” she laughed softly. It reverberated back to them, becoming the audience the comedienne in her had always wanted. “Will you stand over there and talk to me for a while? But you gotta _promise_ not to peek, okay? I _know_ how you are, buddy.”

“That’s it. See you outside,” he grumped, turning to leave.

“No no,” she grabbed his arm, her lamp illuminating his features. He was irritated.

“There. See?” she pointed. “I need you to use your magic Joel powers to open that thing for me.”

He looked at where she was pointing. Looked down at her.

“Are you serious?” His voice was flat, deadpan.

“Am I ser-“ she began, incredulous. “Uh! Look at me, Joel. This is my serious face. I wouldn’t joke about this.”

He took a deep, slow breath inside the gas mask. Held it. Let it out through his nose.

“Fine,” he said levelly. “But I am not carryin’ any of that stuff for you. It only goes into _your_ backpack. Alright?”

“Jeez, Joel,” her voice was slightly indignant. “I wouldn’t ask you to. And it’s not like I need a suitcase full of them or anything. Just enough to get by for a couple of months.”

“All right then,” he said, taking the shiv from where he had tucked it into his belt. “But go ahead and mark this down on the ‘do not discuss list’, okay?”

“Man, that list gets bigger every day,” she needled, glad to have his help but unable to resist the temptation to tease him about this.

“Don’t it though?” He walked over to the metal case mounted on the wall, studied it, shining his flashlight along the seam in the hinged door, looking for the lock. “Seems like a waste of a good shiv, if you ask me.”

She snorted. “Not to me. Quit being such a _man_ about this stuff, Joel. Help a girl out.”

He edged the tip of the shiv into the crack, seeking the most vulnerable part of the lock. “Didn’t think you were old enough to need to worry about stuff like this, kid.”

Sarah hadn’t been. These were uncharted waters to him. Not that Ellie could know that.

“Dude!” her disbelieving voice was a little too loud for a dark space in which they had already killed five infected. “I’m fourteen. And a half! Give or take, you know? I’ve been ‘worrying about stuff like this’ for two years now! When do you think it starts? When I’m old enough to enlist? Or on the day I get married? Not how it works, buddy.”

“That’ll do just fine, Ellie.”

“And I didn’t leave Boston with a lifetime supply of this stuff, okay? I don’t wanna run out next time, okay? Trust me, _nobody_ wants that.”

“Alright, thanks. Hush up now,” Joel said, doing his best to ignore her and focus on the lock. The shiv wasn’t in the best of shape, and he didn’t want use more than one opening this stupid case.

“What’s the big deal, Joel? They’re just tam-“

“Hush. I know what they are.” The lock was tricky, the seam narrow. Not a lot of room to work. He continued to edge the blade around the thin gap, seeking a weak spot.

Ellie watched him, a slow smile spreading across her face as understanding came.

“Wow. This stuff really bothers you, huh?”

“I’m fine. I just don’t wanna talk about it. That’s all. We gotta get out of here soon and find a place to bed down. That old refugee camp down in the stadium doesn’t seem safe to me, even though it looks empty. Too damn many tents to search before I’d feel safe fallin’ asleep down there. And not a bunch of daylight left, yeah? Don’t know how long that old camp’s been abandoned, but you never know what’s hidin’ in a place like that. Rather find some place a little less open to the public, yeah?”

“Pfft. Don’t change the subject,” she snorted. “We were talking about how guys like you get all freaked out by womanly stuff like this. Man, the boys at the school were the same fucking way. Guess your kind never grows out of it.”

“’My kind’?”

“Guys,” she grinned, arms crossed, enjoying herself. “Men. The half of humanity who doesn’t have to deal with this perfectly natural lady stuff. _Boys like you_ who get freaked out by the things we women have to put up with.”

“I’m not freaked out. And knock it off.”

“Yes, you are,” she giggled. “And it’s cute.”

“Ellie.”

She couldn’t stop herself. This was the most entertained she had been all day. She had to press on.

“I’ve never seen you get freaked out by _anything_ ,” she chuckled. “Not bloaters, not clickers, not rotting bodies, not even Bill’s stinky boot odor. And that shit was fucking _vile_. That’s why he was so loud when he walked! His boots were weighed down with all that stink!”

Ellie didn’t realize that among the many Joel powers was the almost superhuman ability to ignore her, but she was determinedly chipping away at his resolve nonetheless.

She continued. “But even a big, tough guy like you gets all cute and squirmy if he hears the word ‘tamp-‘“

“Ellie! I’m not kiddin’! Zip it! Right now!” The shiv broke, a chip of razor sharp steel sailed past the tip of her nose, the small door flew open, a treasure of small, individually wrapped packets and boxes spilled out over the countertop, falling to the floor in a waterfall of unleashed hygienic products.

“Holey moley! Jackpot!” She punched the air in celebration.

Joel stepped back, avoiding the things as if they were deadly rattlesnakes.

“There. You happy now?”

“Yes. Thank you.” She gave a little nod of her head, sounded very sincere. “Can you help me gather them up, please?”

“I opened the dispenser. I’ve done enough for one day.” He was already across the room, trying to break open one of the toilet paper holders inside a nearby stall, staying a healthy distance from her and the pile of stuff she knelt down to scoop up.

“Joel, Joel, Joel,” she laughed, clucking her tongue. “It’s not like you’ve never seen these things before, right? I mean, is that it? Is this new to you? Do you want one? You can look at it. I’ve got plenty. It’s a natural curiosity that you’re feeling. That’s all. Don’t be ashamed.”

“Didn’t I just put this on the ‘do not discuss’ list?”

“I can’t tell. I don’t have it in front of me. And my hands are full of you-know-what’s at the moment.” She could barely keep the snickering from drowning out the words.

She stuffed an ample supply of them into her backpack, packing as many into one of the zippered interior pouches as space would allow.

“These things are like gold out here on the road,” she chortled, taking immense joy in what a concerted effort he was putting into ignoring her. “Yep. I reckon a girl will just about sell her soul for a big stash of tampons.”

“Ellie. That word is on the list. At the _very top_ of the list, in fact.”

“Fine. Be that way,” she held up a tiny cardboard box, one of many scattered on the floor. “What about ‘panty shield’? Can I say that, tough guy?”

“Just grab ‘em, okay? And take as many as you can carry.”

“I don’t need _that many_ , Joel. Do you even know this works? It’s just a little blood. It’s not like I popped an artery in there, okay? It doesn’t come shooting out in a big spray -”

“Ellie! Knock it off!”

“You’re no fun,” she said, scooping up a few more.

“They have other uses, Ellie. So just grab a bunch. In fact… Gimme about ten of the damn things, okay?” he sighed, a giant roll of toilet paper tucked under his arm.

“Uhhh… Why the fuck do you need my tam- um… my ‘stuff’, Joel?” Her eyebrows were distressingly high on her forehead.

“You can use ‘em for all sorts of things, okay?”

“Umm…. Okay. Here you go,” she handed him almost a dozen of them, a strange look on her face the entire time. “Can I ask what sorts of things you’re planning to use these for? Arts and crafts? I’m more of a glue and glitter girl, myself.”

“You can use ‘em to plug a bullet wound, for starters,” he said, shoving them into his shirt pockets, doing his best not to look at them or her.

“Oh! Yeah. That makes sense,” she said, thinking about the clever simplicity of it. “Kind of gross, but it makes sense. Where did you learn that little trick?”

“Paramedic I used to know, name of Lisa. She always had a bunch of these things in her pack.”

“I hope you were nice enough to leave her a _few_ to use for their intended purposes.”

“Ellie.”

“Did you break all her scissors too? I know how you are.” She grinned, her eyes narrowed, teasing him.

“You want me to leave your little butt down here with the clickers?” he asked, buttoning the flaps of his shirt pockets over the items as discretely as he could manage. He would find a safe spot in his pack for them later.

“Oh, fine. Let’s get you out of here before you start to cry.” She edged past him, stepping back into the hallway.

“Good. Finally.” He was grumpy but mildly relieved now.

She reached over and patted his arm affectionately as they walked.

“Thank you, Joel.” Her voice was sweet and very sincere. She could be a good sidekick when she wanted to be. “Really, dude. I owe you one for doing this for me.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re welcome.” He was somewhat mollified now, taking the lead as they made their way back to the stairs, to the stadium above, back to the daylight.

Her voice was very soft and gentle. It echoed down the spore-filled hallway as their lights faded into the darkness, seeking the stairs at the far end.

“Wuss.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the last few plot heavy or action focused chapters, I wanted to let our heroes enjoy a nice, lighthearted romp. There will be plenty of drama and a bit more action ahead, but this is a nice palate cleanser before the darker, heavier stuff to come. 
> 
> Michelle suggested the idea for this story. She pointed out that women deal with this stuff all the time in real life but you never see it in TV shows, movies, or written fiction unless it’s being used for “she sure is bitchy today” laughs or weird “this girl is now old enough to be sexed up” fetish-y stuff. Why couldn’t a Lara Croft kick ass and still have a period? It’s an odd topic to build a story around, I know, but I hope I handled it well enough.
> 
> For those of you charting their progress on Google Earth, this chapter takes place in Delaware, Ohio, in Selby Stadium. The cartoon man in the red robe is the mascot of The Battling Bishops of OWU.
> 
> Also, Ellie originally described herself as a “more of macaroni art girl” until I realized that in this world, nobody would waste food on art projects for little kids. Funny all the little things we take for granted that can easily slip right past you when writing about a post-apocalyptic world.
> 
> Two stories in a row without Ellie’s interior monologue. I’m starting to miss it. Look for it to make a big return next time. Originally, she had a couple of funny “inner voice” lines, but I think the story works better without it because it keeps you out of their heads, and forces you to see them interacting with each other without knowing what the other is thinking. Plus, “uncomfortable with girl stuff” Joel is funny to me. Many guys I know are like that. I have a twin sister and two older half-sisters, so I picked up many packs of pads and whatnot on my way home from my job at a grocery store when I was in high school. I’m more comfortable with that stuff than an old fart like me probably should be. ;-)
> 
> For the music loving readers, the title of this chapter is taken from a line in the song “Threshold” by Beck.
> 
> And that does it for this chapter. Check back in a few days when Riley makes her proper “Flying To Wyoming” debut in a nice, long flashback adventure focused on a younger Ellie in Chapter Fourteen: The Dead Enders.


	14. The Dead Enders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lengthy flashback to a thirteen-year-old Ellie, her cool, older roommate, Riley, and their first days together at the Boston Military Preparatory School. Much adorableness lies ahead!

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 14 – The Dead Enders**

 

Ellie trudges across the blistering hot parking lot, certain that the black work shoes she had been issued weeks ago as part of her blue and gray cadet uniform were going to melt into the soft asphalt. It was late spring. Too early in the year for it to be this damn hot. Nearby, on the other side of the fence at the end of the lot, one of the surlier PT instructors has a group of older boys from floor six doing jumping jacks. The evening before, someone on their floor had snuck downstairs and drilled a hole in the wall of the fifth floor girl’s shower, through the utility closet on the other side. No one would cop to it and now they were all being punished.

_Serves the little fuckers right. I was one of the girls in that shower when they were caught._

At thirteen, she knows that she doesn’t have much worth the effort to peep at, but it’s the principle of the thing. She keeps her eyes fixed forward, certain that a few of them are leering at her, remembering her from the evening before. She won’t give them the pleasure of knowing how it rattled her.

She stops at the gate set in the center of the fence. It is open, Sunday being free time for the students – the ones not being punished by being placed on work detail, anyway. A few of the older students were even allowed to come and go, provided they had earned a day pass to visit the rest of the city. Ellie isn’t old enough to qualify for one of those little magic cards, and she doesn’t behave herself well enough to earn one even if she were older. She isn’t allowed to pass through that gate in either direction until she has been cleared. She waits on the guards. They are in no hurry to allow her to come back inside. She is a known troublemaker. She can hear them listening to their little radio, tuned to the only station in town: WBQZ. The words waft out to her limply on the hot, still air.

“Hey soul sister, ain’t that Mr. Mister on the radio, stereo…”

_God, these guards suck. Even their music sucks._

She sighs, the bucket heavy in her weary hand, and tries to stand very still. The day is sweltering and the boys are still sneaking glances in her direction, whenever the PT instructor isn’t looking.

_Take a good look, you little fucks. And you better hope I don’t catch any of you in the cafeteria later, or balls will be stomped._

_I will stomp all the balls._

Two surly guards wait inside their little shack, a pair of oscillating fans blowing at maximum speed to make the space bearable. They know she is standing out here. They don’t care. No one cares. She is used to that feeling.

One of the older girls approaches from the dorms, her day pass in hand, a smile on her face, her short blonde hair bobbing lightly on her shoulders. She is dressed very nicely, as nicely as an orphan girl can be in this world, anyway. Ellie finds her very attractive and does her best not to stare, but the cute pink top the girl is wearing makes it difficult.

“Phillips, Melody V. Dorm T-3. Requesting permission to exit the facility, sir. I have a day pas-“ she begins, holding up the proper form and her ID card. The guard waves her through with barely a glance.

“Hey, Mel,” says Ellie, still waiting patiently in the broiling sun on the other side of the gate. Melody is sweet and pretty. Ellie hopes to get her attention for a few minutes.

“Hi, Ellie. Work detail? On a Sunday? _Again_?” Mel asks with a friendly wink, stopping close to the younger girl.

“Every day of my life,” Ellie tries to force a cocky smile, but she’s so tired, she isn’t sure she has managed to pull it off. The girls of her dorm often compete with the girls of Mel’s dorm in outdoor sporting events. She knows Melody well enough to like her.

“You know,” Mel offers in a low voice, a faint smile on her full mouth, glistening with pink lip gloss, “I hear that some cadets are actually getting Sundays off these days. Something about them staying out of trouble during the week. I’m not sure about the details, but that’s the rumor anyway.”

“Ha ha,” Ellie replies with a roll of her eyes. Mel is one of the few older girls who treats her halfway decently. But then, Melody Phillips treats everyone decently. “I guess I haven’t heard that urban legend going around. Staying out of trouble, you say? Well, I’ll have to look into it one of these days, but it sounds like propaganda to me.”

“I just don’t want to see you get kicked out, Ellie. It can get hard in here, I know. But it’s worse out there.” Melody says, trying to sound as comforting and sincere as possible.

_We both know you’re graduating at the end of this semester, Melody. You’re sixteen now. Summer semester ends the last week of August. Your graduation is almost here. Then it’s off to the military or down to the slums with the civvies. You don’t want to be a soldier. We all know it. How do you stay so fucking calm?_

“I’ll be fine,” Ellie smirks. “Still got a few years before I turn sixteen, Mel. Plenty of time to change my wicked ways and get right with the lord, or Superintendent Nemeth, or whoever is more important.”

“Not if they kick you out before then. I don’t want to think about you out on those streets at your age, Ellie. You know?”

“Thanks, Mel. But I’m not going anywhere. I know how to manage my demerits. I don’t get a new one until one of the old ones has fallen off the rolls. Try not to, anyway.”

“HEY!” comes the shout from inside the shack. “Stop blocking the gate, Phillips! Move along!”

“Yes, sir!” Melody snaps to, even though she is in street clothes. She hustles off into the city, offering only a few parting words to Ellie’s back. “Be good, Ellie. For God’s sake, _be good_. Okay?”

“Stay out of trouble, Melody. Say hi to your boyfriend for me,” Ellie calls brashly, without looking back. Her over-worked fingers are threatening to go on strike. She wants to put the damn pail down, but knows it will only cause trouble for her if she does. She is still officially on work detail after all and she doesn’t want get busted by giving the guards any excuse to claim she was taking an unauthorized break. She takes a deep breath, commands her fingers to stop hurting, and waits.

One of the guards stomps out at last, dressed in full riot gear, for maximum intimidation, as always. He sizes her up briefly, his face invisible behind the smoked face shield of his helmet.

“No talking on work detail, cadet Williams.”

_I love it when they know my name. Makes me feel like I’m somebody. Notorious._

”Sorry, sir,” Ellie says crisply. No need to borrow trouble this close to the end of her workday. She knows that if she just plays the game for a few more minutes, she will be home free soon. “Won’t happen again, sir.”

“Uh huh,” he says skeptically. “Let’s see some ID, cadet.” He knows her, of course. He is the same guard who signed her out this morning, at 1000 hours.

_I miss being twelve. Twelve-year-olds are still allowed to be kids. Once you turn thirteen, you stop being ‘kid’ and start being ‘cadet.’ Chores become details. Rules become laws. Teachers become instructors. Friendly helpers become armed guards. It sucks._

_Should have never decided to grow up. What the fuck was I thinking? i should have known this puberty thing was a big mistake._

He taps his nightstick against the palm of one leather-gloved hand while she shifts the bucket to her left hand and digs around for the little wallet in of her back pocket. She does her best to make it seem like he isn’t scary to her at all. She has dealt with the guards so many times by this point in her life that they pretty much aren’t scary anymore. Not too much, anyway.

She holds up the little wallet, flips it open to display her ID card with practiced ease.

“Outside work detail returning to dormitories, sir. One cadet in the detail, present and accounted for, sir” She recites it automatically, the words rote to her by now. “Williams, Eleanor S. Dormitory T-1. Cadet ID Number SS-5-6784 / 254-5, sir.”

“Did you learn a lesson today, cadet?”

“Yes, sir. Removing spray paint is hard work, sir. It’s no way to spend my day off, sir.” She makes sure to put a ‘sir’ at the end of every sentence, just as all the cadets were required to do. “I’ll do my best to stay out of trouble in the future, sir.”

_Lick my balls, sir._

The boys are standing at attention now, being lectured about trust and responsibility and most of all, respect for their sister cadets. Several of them continue to steal glances at her. She tries hard to remember the faces of the ones who keep staring, certain that she knows now who was looking at her and the other girls through that little hole yesterday evening. Those particular boys who kept cutting their eyes over at her wouldn’t be staring so hard at her, sweaty and disheveled as she is, watching her with such focused intensity, if they weren’t trying to remember how she looked before, all soaped up under the spray of lukewarm water. Trying to take what they had seen before and apply it to her now. Undressing her with their eyes, she has heard it called. It makes her skin crawl.

Most boys are gross to her anyway, even the ones not leering at her. She knows most other girls don’t feel this way, so she had decided to keep this feeling to herself. She knows she is enough of a misfit as it is, with her love of comic books and science fiction and bad puns. No need to make herself seem even more of an oddball than she already is.

_Why don’t you take that damn nightstick to those little shits right now, instead of punishing me when I get even with them later, you lazy fucker?_

“Glad to hear it, cadet,” he says, after studying her for a long minute, not altogether unkindly. She cannot appreciate that this is just a job for him, and a good one at that. His last assignment was six months of outside patrol, out there every day with the stragglers, the crazies, and the infected. He lost two good friends on that job. He is glad to have this assignment, but he knows you can’t show the cadets any softness. Especially the bad seeds like her. In his own way, he is actually trying to help her, though she won’t be able to appreciate that until several years have passed and her time in Boston is just a memory.

He takes a clipboard from the wall just inside the door of the shack. A pencil covered in tooth marks is secured to the clip by a length of string and a twist of cellophane tape.

“Williams, E. S. Work detail complete at…” he glances at the clock on the wall inside the shack, his pencil making chicken scratches across the official form. “1435 hours. Expected return time was 1400 hours. You completed the task as required, yes?”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I don’t like doing the same job twice in the same day, sir. Job took longer than I thought it would, but I did it right, I promise, sir. My work area stands ready for inspection, sir.”

_If I didn’t, someone would come and get me and stand over me while I scrubbed the fucking wall until the fucking sun went down, sir sir fuckety-sir._

“All right then. I’ll go check it out later. But I think I’ll trust you for now, cadet.”

“Thank you, sir,” she says, standing up a little bit straighter, surprised by this unexpected amount of trust placed in her, miniscule as it might be. She is feeling the aches in her sore shoulders and back, feeling the eyes of the older boys on her, feeling vulnerable. She hates them at this moment. She is already planning the first of her ambush attacks, the beginning of her revenge. There will be more Sundays like this in her future.

_Count on it, you perverts._

She is the last cadet to return from work detail today. The guard crosses her name off the list on his clipboard and hangs it up for the day.

“Go on through,” he says, stepping aside to make way for her.

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” She slips the laminated card displayed inside the little vinyl wallet back into her pocket. She looks at the sign mounted on the fence as she passes inside the boundary that marks the extent of her daily world, that keeps her trapped in here, that separates the privileged children who live here from the hungry people outside. That’s how the soldiers told the students that the people of the city viewed them, anyway. Probably just more propaganda.

                    **FEDRA - MILITARY PREPARATORY SCHOOL**  
          These premises have hereby been secured for FEDRA use  
            under the authority of the Security Act, Section 9.18.74

She hates that sign. It might as well read ‘Boston Prison For Unloved Children’. Why on earth would anyone in the city think her life inside this fence is a privileged one?

_I’d trade places with any of them in a heartbeat._

She has no idea how hard life can be for people living outside this compound, how bad it is beyond the walls of the Quarantine Zone. She will learn one day, but for now she thinks this is as bad as it can get. She has never been outside the thick concrete security walls of Boston in her life. She doesn’t know that she is safe here in a way she will never be again. She is only thirteen, she has no idea what she doesn’t know yet.

Just around the side of the main building is the dorm’s tool shed. She makes for it, trudging along with tired feet, trying her best not to look anything other than tough as nails as she walks past the boys being marched out on the double to run laps in the small park across the street.

“Hey, sexy!” one of them whispers as he trots past her. Kyle, she thinks his name is.

_Yours shall be the first balls to be stomped, Kyle. Stomped. Flat._

A student she doesn’t recognize, a boy about her age, is waiting beside the tool shed. He has been waiting for her to return for a while now. Today, he is responsible for all the rakes, and brooms, and other shit inside the shed. He must have good luck to draw such a plum assignment as punishment. But it’s an assignment that he can’t finish until she returns with his precious bucket and brush. He is eager to lock the shed and enjoy what’s left of his only day off. She sits the pail down next to him, glad to be rid of the damned thing at last.

“You’re Ellie?” he asks, looking at the scribble she had placed on the sign out sheet that morning.

“Yep. That’s me.” She bends down, pulls out the stiff brush from inside the bucket, holds it up for him. He isn’t one of the fifteen-year-old boys on floor six, he wasn’t part of the incident on Saturday evening, he hasn’t done anything to her. She tries to make the effort to be nice to him. She’s not the good girl that Melanie is, she doesn’t make friends as easily as Mel does, but she still tries to be a good kid whenever she can. With the other students, at least. Fuck the instructors.

He inspects the brush, looks at the pail, making sure both are clean and still serviceable.

“What did they have you doing?” he asks, hanging the brush up on a little peg, one of many such brushes and pegs on the wall.

“Graffiti removal,” she says, yawning, stretching. “Am I good to go?”

“Yep,” he is already closing the door, locking the shed, anxious to return the key to the adult supervisor at the front desk, ready to have a little fun before the day is over.

It was a quarter to three on a hot Sunday afternoon in Boston. Her day off could finally begin.

_Fucking hooray for me._

She begins to cross the concrete plaza with its many benches, covered with lounging students, and its big flag pole with Old Glory stirring limply in the weak breeze, weaving around the main building, the educational center, to one of the smaller buildings behind it: T-1, her dormitory. Her muscles ache and she is hungry. Someone was supposed to bring lunch out to her at noon. But no one did. She is used to being forgotten about. She didn’t come back to see what the holdup was. She relished the chance to be off the campus grounds, even it was just on the other side of the fence, at the rear corner of the compound, in the little alley where the older students sometimes snuck out to hide, make out, and swap smokes for contraband items friendly smugglers had sold them.

_That alley smelled like freedom to me. Freedom and paint remover. And urine._

Some of the urine may or may not have been hers. She will never tell.

_Four and a half fucking hours of scrubbing those brick walls. Fuck, what a long day._

She enters Dormitory T-1, pushes through the double doors at the back of the lobby, past the bored girl on dorm guard duty who doesn’t even look up at her as she passes by, on her way to the first-year girl’s living area, shuffles her way down the hallway to room 103. She is ready to get undressed. Her clothes are saturated with drying sweat. They stick to her like wet paint. She reaches for her room key stuffed inside her pocket, hears two girls laughing from inside the room just as she’s about to place her hand on the knob.

Suddenly she remembers that she was re-assigned to a new room last Monday. She must have walked to her old room on autopilot. She looks around, glad that no one has seen her make such a stupid mistake. She’s only been at this dumb school for a month or so. She doesn’t want to make her reputation worse than it already is by acting like a space cadet. She dashes further down the hall, to the stairwell, her sore feet pounding on each metal step as she runs up to floor five, the floor for the senior girls. Her legs are very tired now.

She wonders if her new roommate will be there. Probably not. That girl is way too cool to hang around the dorm room on her day off, especially now that the older girl has been saddled with a dorky young freshman kid as a roommate, since the freshman floor run out of available rooms. No one seems to know when a downstairs room is going to become available for Ellie, exactly. A few of the instructors know about the mix up, but don’t seem to care. No one seems to be in any hurry to find a spot for her down on floor one. Ellie is content to let the problem remain unsolved. She really likes her new roommate. Plus, being the only freshman up on floor five, mixed in with all the senior girls, makes her sort of intimidating to the other freshmen girls and boys. She likes that. The fact that she’s already been in two fights helps her reputation too. People are learning not to mess with Ellie Williams.

She leaves the stairwell, walks past another girl on dorm guard, just as bored as the one downstairs, and enters the hallway. Some of the older girls are still not used to seeing a freshman up here. One starts to tell her to go back down to the nursery, but another girl says that Ellie belongs up here, according to the roster anyway. Ellie does her best to strut past both of them, swaggering as though she belongs in their company.

It is intimidating to be up here with all the older girls. They are all much more mature than her, much more developed than her. She is especially aware of it when she is in the shower with them. But she takes a crazy sort of unearned pride in the accidental roster fuck up that landed her here. The older girls might not be too crazy about having her mixed in with them, but she gets into enough trouble that a few of them have developed a sort of grudging respect for the punky little redheaded freshman. As long as she stays out of their way, they don’t mind her hanging around the day room with them after classes. Not too much, anyway. So long as she stays quiet.

She has reached the door to her room. 529, the last door at the end of the hall, tucked around a corner all by itself, across from the mop closet and next to the electrical room. ‘Dead End Row’ some of the other girls call it. To Ellie, it is the closet thing she has ever had to a place that feels like home.

She turns the key and steps inside, feeling safer already.

“Honey, I’m home,” she says to no one, kicking off her black work shoes, expecting the room to be empty.

“What’s the password?” the darker girl reading a Batman comic on the top bunk asks.

Ellie is thrilled to discover that her roommate, Riley, a senior, the coolest girl in the entire school, a troublemaker of the highest order, and, to Ellie’s eyes, the prettiest girl she has ever seen, is home to hang out with her. Riley is everything Ellie hopes to be one day.

She is so happy to see her new friend that she decides to be bold. She hopes Riley will play along. Riley seems to be fond of her, or at least willing to put up with a freshman roommate. Ellie hopes Riley will think of her as a real friend one day.

“The password is: Fuck you and stop stealing my damn Batman comics,” Ellie says, shrugging off her soiled gray work pants, standard issue for all cadets. Four and a half hours on work detail in the Boston summer heat had left her wet and sticky.

“That’s not the password, freshman,” Riley says tartly, turning to a new page. “Now do it right or I’m coming down there. I’ll pin you to the carpet and make you say it right, and I might even make you sing the song too.”

Ellie groans. “Ugh. Not the song. I’ve had a really shitty day, Riley. Come on. Be nice.”

“Better say it, new girl. Otherwise, we’re both gonna feel bad when I make you cry.”

Her words are coarse but Ellie can hear the mirth in her voice.

“God, you are so mean to me,” Ellie says bluntly, but with affection.

“Elllliiieeee.” Cautioning. Sadistic. Teasing. No playing now. Like it or not, Riley has set the rules and little Ellie had better play along.

Ellie sighs, takes a deep breath. If she’s going to say this, she wants to do it right the first time. Singing the National Anthem of Room 529 is just too fucking embarrassing.

“Please, Miss Riley, may I come in? I’m not worthy to be in your divine presence but I live to serve you. I am your humble, devoted, freshman slave.” She hopes she memorized it correctly. Every day Riley has made her do this before letting her come in after classes. She hates being made to grovel like this out of general principle, but for some reason that she can’t quite put her finger on, she loves it when Riley makes her beg. She tries not to think about it too much. It’s just one more thing about her that makes her a weirdo.

“Mmm,” Riley lies there, considering this entreaty with poorly concealed glee. “Maybe I should make you go back outside, wait a few minutes, and then let you come back in and try it again. What do you think, new girl?”

“Stop calling me ‘new girl.’ You know I hate that. And I’m not going back outside. I’m not wearing any pants.”

“Whose fault is that? Maybe making you stand out there in your underwear for a while will teach you some respect for your elders, kid.”

“I respect you plenty, ‘Miss Riley’. Now come on, please don’t make me go out there in my panties.” Ellie knows she won’t force her to do that. Part of her wishes she would.

“Oh, fine. Since it’s Sunday, I’ll let you enter my luxurious abode, Cadet Williams. But next time I want to hear more enthusiasm out of you when you give the password.”

“Har har, Riley. And I was coming in anyway, just so you know. This is my room too. My name’s on the roster, isn’t it? Hell, I’m already undressed.” She unbuttons her damp blue cadet shirt and tosses it onto the overfull laundry basket in the corner. The pile is too high and the shirt rolls off onto the floor. She shivers as the breeze from the oscillating fan in the corner passes over her sweaty skin.

“Supposed to have this room all to _myself_ this semester… Until they transferred _you_ up here, for _some reason_ ,” Riley teases, pretending to gripe, barely giving the underdressed freshman a glance as she turns the pages of her borrowed comic book. “Damn conspiracy against me is what it is. But I was here first. I’m the upper classman. I’m bigger and stronger. And I’m _much sexier_. So I make the rules.”

“Pfft. You wish you were as sexy as me,” Ellie snarks, knowing that Riley speaks the truth, but unwilling to give up without a fight. “Scrawny little white chicks are what’s hot this season, didn’t you know? We _never_ go out of style.”

Riley laughs. She likes her new roommate. Ellie is funny.

“Put some clothes on, you little freak. New rule: Underwear doesn’t count as clothing while the sun is up.”

“Ugh. Too many rules. Too tired. Can’t keep track of ‘em anymore,” Ellie yawns.

The younger girl crosses the room and plops down on the floor by her bottom bunk. She leans back against the mattress, resting on the edge of a bed so tightly made you can bounce a quarter off of it. She feels the soreness of the day’s chores beginning to make its first unwelcome appearance in the depths of her muscles. She thinks about taking off her socks, but decides that her feet are just too damn far away. She slips off her bra instead. The fan blows across her again and she sighs. It feels wonderful.

“Look out,” she says, grinning wickedly. “Getting more naked down here.”

“Augh! Damn it! Did you not hear the new rule? Am I going to have to call an Official Meeting of Room 529 again?”

“No meetings. It’s a Sunday. Only dicks call meetings on Sundays. And only bigger dicks keep making me beg to enter my own room. How long are you going to keep doing that anyway?”

“Till I get tired of it.”

“So… forever then?”

“Pretty much.”

Ellie’s stomach rumbles loudly enough that Riley giggles from the top bunk. Ellie tries to slingshot her sweaty bra up there, hoping to hit Riley in the face when it rebounds off the ceiling. It sails wide and Riley catches it in mid-air, never putting the comic down. It’s an impressive display of reflexes.

“Mine now.”

“Ha! What the hell would you do with it? Both my little cups together couldn’t hold one of your overdeveloped knockers. You’re like a cow, I swear.”

It’s not exactly an honest assessment. Riley is modestly endowed for a fifteen year old, but compared to the much younger, much flatter Ellie, she is practically pendulous.

“True. That’s why I’ll cut this up and make two drink coasters out of it,” she pauses for effect. Giggles. “Two _teeny tiny_ drink coasters.”

“You. Are. Such. A. _Dick_.” Ellie groans, hungry and tired.

“Bobby and his crew were up here today,” Riley says, changing the subject.

“Inspection?” Ellie has an edge of fear in her voice.

“Yep. They tossed the whole room. Somebody spread a rumor that you and I had beer up here last night; that I was contributing to the corruption of a poor, innocent, little child – that would be you by the way – they don’t know you like I do, I guess. But I already stashed those cans in the ceiling of the janitor’s closet when I stepped out to pee last night. They didn’t find ‘em. We’re in the clear.”

But Ellie isn’t listening. Her racing mind is on other things.

_Oh fuck!_

She spins around, rises to her knees, lifts the edge of her mattress.

_It’s gone!_

“Oh no… Oh, fuck no.” Ellie whispers, shattered, heartbroken, on the edge of tears.

“Got you covered, girl.” Riley says coolly, passing down the switchblade that means so much to Ellie. She dangles it before Ellie’s dancing eyes, deftly holding on to one end of the knife with graceful brown fingers. All Ellie can see of her friend is her arm. She wants to kiss that hand.

Ellie is overcome with relief. “Oh thank God.”

“God? What the hell did He do? Zip! That’s what. Don’t you know? You can’t count on Him for anything. It was _me_ that hid it, girl. And you don’t _even_ want to know where.”

Ellie brightens, cradling her mother’s knife. Riley has her back. She’s sure of that now.

“Eew!” she says, wanting to make Riley laugh again. “We’re having a moment of trust and bonding here, Riley. Don’t ruin it for me by making me sniff my knife.”

Riley cackles the way she usually does when Ellie really hits her funny bone. To Ellie, it is the most wonderful sound ever.

“Damn, Ellie. You are the funniest, weirdest, nakedest freshman I’ve ever known.” She continues to laugh. “Stabbiest too, probably. And I hid it in _my_ _bra_ , you little perv.”

Ellie wants to join in the laughter, but she is overflowing with gratitude for Riley. It soaks into her every word. “Thanks for looking out for me, Riley. How did you even know where I hid this?”

“Like you have any secrets from me, dear little Ellie. Riley knows all. Riley sees all,” she says airily, waving her hand like a magician. “Riley was also there the night Marlene gave this to you, dumbass. Remember? Riley wanted to find where you kept it hidden, so she did. And Riley looks out for her friends too.”

_‘Friends’. So fucking awesome._

The hand appears again, passes down the Batman comic to its rightful owner. “Riley is also done with this lame comic. Barely any blood. No sex scenes at all. Riley expects more out of Batman.”

“I’ll try to provide you with better reading material next time, Miss Riley,” Ellie smiles, tucking the switchblade under her pillow, padding across the room, putting the comic in the pile with all the others on the third shelf of the little bookcase she shares with Riley. All of Ellie’s stuff has to go on the bottom shelf, naturally. She peels her damp socks off and kneels there for a moment, trying to straighten the little pile of comics that Riley has made into an unruly mess.

The lovely brown hand points. “Something for you on the top shelf, boo.”

Ellie stands, looks, finds a styrofoam plate covered with a napkin. Underneath the paper, she finds a peanut butter sandwich and several apple slices. A warm glass of orange Kool-aid sits nearby. Only a few sips have been taken from it. Riley prefers grape.

“Fuck yes! I’m hungry! And thirsty! Gimme!” Ellie says, stuffing her mouth greedily. ‘Oh God, Riley! You’re the best.”

“As if I didn’t know that?” Riley is laying on her side now, on the edge of the mattress, watching her mostly naked roommate funnel apple slices down her gullet, chewing in only the vaguest definition of the term. Riley cocks an eyebrow. It is quite a show.

As Ellie turns her attention to the sandwich, trying not to choke on the stale bread, Riley fills her in.

“You know that girl with the big tits, the one who’s always on kitchen duty?”

“Cherreh Jahhfoh?” Ellie asks, her mouth full of thick peanut butter.

“Yeah. Cherry Jackson. She was supposed to take lunch out to you, but she went into Turner’s office around noon. Haven’t seen her since.”

Ellie swallows, chases it with some Kool-aid. “She’s in trouble? Got caught cutting class again? Too bad. I like her. So what happened? Is she being forced to write an essay about the importance of punctuality or some bullshit?”

“That’s not _exactly_ why she went in there, Ellie.” Riley’s tone has shifted subtly. Ellie doesn’t pick up on precisely what it is Riley is trying to say.

“Oh? Then what?”

Riley continues with a weary sigh. “She’s in danger of failing, Ellie. She’s gotta do what she’s gotta do if she wants to stay safe inside the fence… And what she’s gotta _do_ is Lieutenant Colonel Turner, I guess.”

“Oh.” Ellie understands now. Most of it anyway, she thinks. She finishes the sandwich and tries hard not to think about what Cherry had to do today to keep her grades up. She sort of understands about that stuff. Kind of. And she knows enough to know that this makes her uncomfortable. Knows enough to know that it shouldn’t be like that. Girls shouldn’t be pressured into doing it like this. It should mean more. It should be special. Or something.

Riley says nothing more about it either. It’s not a subject they want to joke about, Riley especially. Ellie at least is young enough to be mostly ignorant about how things really work around here; the price that the female students sometimes have to pay. Riley knows more about it than she will say.

Ellie finishes the orange Kool-aid. “Ahhh. You’re too good to me, Riley.”

Riley is grateful for the change of subject. “Damn right, I am. You should kiss the ground I walk on, girl. Hell, you should kiss my damn feet. Who else is taking care of you around here?“

Ellie is seated on the floor beside the bed again. She grins up at her friend who is peering down at her from above. Ellie would kiss those feet in a heartbeat.

“Just you, Riley.”

“That’s right, kid. You and me, we’re the Dead Enders of 529. All we got is each other.”

Ellie loves the sound of that. She smiles. Doesn’t know what to say that would sound even half as cool as what Riley just said to her. After today, she is finally certain that the super cool, super pretty, super badass Riley Abel is her friend.

_Doesn’t get much better than this._

“Thank you, Riley.” Her voice comes out softer than she wants it to. She wants to sound cool, like Riley, not soft and girly, like some shy little freshman dork.

“No problem, new kid. So now that we’re all BFF’s and shit, will you _please_ put on some damn clothes now? For real, Ellie.”

“Never!” Ellie has fought this battle with Riley several times this week. It is the only battle Riley will let her win.

They laugh.

“So what did they have you doing out there today, you naked little freak?”

“Graffiti removal,” Ellie yawns, stretching, enjoying the latest pass of the fan. “Last night somebody hit the back alley and the corner of the south wall. Been out there all fucking day, scrubbing that shit off.”

Riley grins, eager to hear more about the alley. “Did you get the big green Firefly logo? The one that said ‘Fuck FEDRA’ underneath it?”

“Yeah. Got that big fucker too. Not a trace of it left, that’s how much of a hard worker I am.”

“Shame. That was some of my best work.”

“That was you? _You dick_!” Ellie looks up at Riley indignantly. She is also impressed, though she won’t admit it. That tag had been right at the edge of the alley. It must have taken some big balls to paint the wall there, so close to the regular patrols that drove down that street. Riley has the biggest balls of any girl Ellie has ever known. “Man, fuck you! I wasted my day off cleaning up your mess. God, Riley! I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” Smugly.

“No, I don’t.” Shyly.

Ellie smiles, shakes her head, and slowly, dramatically slides over on her side, slumping down to rest on the cool floor, moaning charmingly all the way down. She stretches her legs out and rests her cheek in the crook of her elbow.

“No, I don’t,” she repeats wearily, and sighs as she snuggles into her arm.

“And,” says Riley, sliding over the edge of the top bunk, climbing down to sit beside her, “ _you_ wasted your own day off because you fucked up and got caught in hallway after lights out because you were trying to sneak out last night. Don’t try to pin that shit on me, girl.”

Ellie cocks open one eye. Riley is wearing black sweatpants and a dark red tank top. Her thick mop of wild hair is loose, a giant halo of tight black curls around her head. A rare sight to be sure, and one that Ellie wishes she saw more often. Her own hair was so thin. She wishes her stringy red locks were half as thick as those of her friend. Riley sits off to one side, her weight resting on one shapely hip, a slim hand supporting her. Ellie notices she is wearing cute purple and green socks that she has never seen before. Nothing at all like the standard white tube socks they are issued here. She wonders what item Riley had traded to score them. No way they were cheap. She hopes it wasn’t anything of hers.

“Yeah. I got caught,” Ellie grudgingly admits, closing her eyes again. “But only because I was trying to follow you. And… I guess I was a little drunk. So sue me. I was off my game.”

“Told you not to drink that entire beer all at once.”

“Why not? You did. You _slammed_ that damn thing.”

“Yeah, but I’m also bigger than you. And tougher. And sexier. And it wasn’t my first beer, little girl. How the fuck was I supposed to know you were such a cheap date?”

“I am. I knooooow,” Ellie whines, doing her best to sound pitiful. “God, I got so drunk, off of one fucking beer. I’m so lame. You really are corrupting this poor, innocent, little child. Why won’t someone save me from you before it’s too late?”

“Pffft. You love it, Ellie.”

“I do.”

Riley giggles. Ellie will never get tired of that sound.

“Whatever, girl.” Riley says, poking Ellie’s arm with a strong, small finger. “All I know is that today I _finally_ had this room all to myself again. The way it _supposed to be_ before _somebody_ showed up and decided she was entitled to a tenth of _my_ room.”

“A ninth,” Ellie corrects her. “We agreed on that, remember? If I do the laundry, I don’t have to sleep on the bottom shelf of the bookcase.”

“And are you _doing_ the laundry?”

“Ummmm…” Ellie knows she is busted, tries not so smile.

“That’s right, you lazy little shit. It’s the shelf for you tonight,” Riley pokes her again. “You’ve lost your bed privileges. The beds are on _my side_ of the room, part of my nine-tenths. You have to sleep in the bookcase until further notice.”

“But I can’t even fit on that shelf! I’m not _that_ small. And it’s full of comics!”

“The comics are mine now. And you’d better curl up into a little ball or something. ‘Cause if I see so much as a finger hanging over the side of your little shelf, I’m coming down there and beating some respect for the rules into you, new girl.”

“Come on, Miss Riley. Don’t kick me out of your bunk beds. Pleeeaaase!” Ellie whimpers theatrically, taking a secret perverse thrill in being made to beg. She arches both her eyebrows, tries to look extra sad and pathetic, keeps her eyes closed. “Besides, I took the fall for you last night. I coulda ratted you out, but I didn’t. _You owe me_.”

“Fine. I suppose I can be nice and let you sleep in my bottom bunk. But the beds are a _courtesy_ I’m extending to you, because I’m so nice, not because your sorry ass deserves a soft place to sleep. And I’m getting all your sheets and blankets tonight. You’ll have to earn your bed linen privileges back at a later date.”

”You can have ‘em. It’s hot as hell today.”

“Fuck. Tell me about it,” Riley groans. “Even with the window open and the fan going, it’s a damn oven in here today.”

“So what did you do all day? Not anything I’m gonna have to scrub off a wall tomorrow, I hope.”

“Not much. Sat around here, mostly,” Riley says, leaning back, propping herself up on both hands. “Read your comics. Flipped through your diary, read all the dirty parts. Rubbed my butt on your pillow. Peeked at your secret stash of dirty magazines.”

“Psssh. You _wish_ I had some dirty magazines,” Ellie yawns, stretching adorably. “We _both_ wish I had some dirty magazines.”

Riley laughs. “That’s true. I wish you had a diary too, so I could show it to everyone. Gonna have to get you one, I guess. Maybe for Christmas.”

“You’ll have to help me think up a bunch of sexy lies to fill it with, if you’re gonna show it to everyone. My real life isn’t very interesting. Or very sexy, sadly.”

“No problem. We’ll just go talk to Cherry for an hour. Ask her about all the guys she’s fucked. Write down everything she says. Have you sign your name to it. That shit will be a best seller.”

“Can’t wait. I’ll be the most popular girl in school.”

“See? I’m looking out for you, Ellie.” Riley snorted. “Hell, I’m already telling everyone about how you fucking refuse to wear clothes in here.”

“Y-you’re not actually doing that… are you?” Ellie eases one eye open to look at Riley. This is not a thing she about herself that she wants getting around. She knows it’s weird.

“Of course not, boo,” Riley pats her friend’s shoulder. She winks at Ellie. “That’s our little secret. Our weird, embarrassing as fuck, creepy little secret.”

“Thanks, Riley. You’re the best,” Ellie says, eyes closed, curling up again, just a little closer to Riley than she was before. “So why didn’t you go hang out with Tino or Linh or somebody today?”

“I dunno,” Riley shrugs, reaching down to tussle Ellie’s little ponytail, wishing that she had hair as nice and straight and soft as her new friend. “Wanted to wait for you, I guess.”

“You _like_ me!” Ellie mocks affectionately. “And I’m a _freshman_! God! You’re so fucking lame, Riley.”

“Shut the hell up before I make you sing the song. Don’t think I won’t.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ellie says meekly, with exaggerated contriteness. “I’ll be good.”

“Ahh…” Riley continues after a minute or so of letting the fan play across them for a few passes, “I guess I felt a little… guilty about last night… getting you drunk… and getting you in trouble.”

“You should. I was a model student before they sent me up here to live with you. It’s like I was an animal sacrifice they were offering up to the wicked, dark goddess of Room 529 or something.”

“More like a virgin sacrifice, you mean. And you were _never_ a good student. Stop lying.” Riley laughs at the mental image Ellie has conjured up for her. “’Animal sacrifice’ … ‘dark goddess’ … You read way too damn many comic books, Ellie.”

“No such thing as too many comics.” Ellie yawns again. She doesn’t know that Riley thinks she’s very cute at this moment.

“Come on, Ellie. Get up. You need a shower,” Riley nudges her friend with her foot.

“Can’t. I died. Here on the floor. Just now. I’m dead because I had to spend my Sunday cleaning up your mess and I worked myself to death at the tragic age of barely thirteen.”

“Bare is right. And you died a virgin too. How heartbreakingly sad.”

Ellie heaves a deep sigh, deeper than one normally hears from a corpse. She rolls over onto her back, rests her hands across her torso, trying her best to look like a corpse laid out in a casket. Her eyes stay closed. “So true. I never found my one true love and got that incredibly deep and awesome boning that every girl dreams about.”

“Yeah. Sad to see you go, all unboned and topless like this. But now you’re dead and you’re stinking up my room. And that shit has gotta stop. Go hit the showers. Don’t make me carry your dead body out to the dumpster.” Riley gently kicks at her.

Ellie keeps her eyes closed, still doing her best to pretend to be dead. Dead girls don’t respond to being nudged by green and purple socks.

“You’re the one who stinks, Riley,” Ellie moans, trying to elicit sympathy, but she knows none is coming. “It’s because of you that I spent my day off working _like a dog_. That’s how much _you_ stink.”

“Yeah, well, you smell like a dog. Now _get up_ and go take a damned shower already.”

“Can’t do it. Too tired and way too dead,” she says from her ever more comfortable spot on the floor, trying to ignore the increasingly firm nudges from Riley’s foot.

“Fine. Whatever,” says Riley, getting up with a determined huff. “But it’s a furnace in here. You can stay here and rot if you want. I’m gonna go take a shower.”

Ellie is on her feet in a flash.

“Let me get my towel,” she says, suddenly crackling with energy, the deadness fading from her remarkably fresh corpse with astounding speed.

“And put some fucking clothes on, Ellie. You can’t walk around in the halls with your nonexistent tits hanging out. Somebody’s gonna see that they’re not there and report you as the victim of a boob theft,” Riley snorts.

“Good! I’d love to know who has them. Justice must be served,” Ellie grumbles, grabbing a loose fitting shirt from a drawer and her rattiest pair of gym shorts. Good enough for the walk down the hall to the showers. Riley tosses a clean towel to her.

“And I’d better not catch you looking at my butt again,” Riley teases, freezing Ellie in her tracks, wide-eyed and scared. Busted.

“W-what? Me?” Ellie stammers, an icy cold chill running down her spine despite the sweltering heat of the little room. “Don’t even pretend like I would do that. Why would I? My butt is, like, twice as nice as yours. Ten times as nice!”

“Your skinny little white girl butt? Please. I’ve seen better butts in an ashtray.” Riley drapes a towel around her neck, waiting for Ellie, who is still stepping into her shorts.

“Ouch! That was just mean!” Ellie winces, trying to be playful but feeling the burn from the insult, no matter if was meant in good fun. “And what are you doing looking at _my skinny little white butt_ , Riley? Shame on you. People are gonna talk about us!”

Riley has removed her fancy socks. She drops them on the laundry pile, they roll off onto the floor. She sighs, steps into her old yellow foam flip-flops. She knows she’s going to have to put Ellie in a headlock if that laundry is ever going to get washed.

Ellie bends over, looking underneath her bunk for her own flip-flops but not finding them. She drops to her hands and knees, her face dips low. She knows those shower shoes have to be under there somewhere. Behind her, Riley begins to twist the towel in her hands tightly.

“They already do, dumbass. It’s only been a week and already half this floor thinks we’re a couple of lesbians,” Riley snaps Ellie’s backside with her towel as the younger girl is on all fours, smiling at the squeal of pain and surprise it elicits. She’s been waiting to do that since Ellie came into the room. Riley opens the door to the hallway as Ellie looks up to face her.

“Ouch. Too hard, you fucking _sadist_. Go easy! I don’t have a lot of butt to abuse. You said it yourself.”

“And yet I can’t stop abusing it.” She gives Ellie’s bottom another playful thwack with the loose towel as the younger girl walks around her, ready to step out into the hallway. “Wow. Maybe I _am_ a sadist.”

“Maybe you’re a _lesbian_ ,” Ellie half-teases, looking for some sort of telltale sign from her friend, hoping to find some glimmer that she wasn’t the only one feeling certain urges about her roommate, but finds none. “You know, the boys down on floor four say that you won me in a poker game and that I’m your love slave. What a bunch of jerks.”

Several girls are milling around in the hallway. Many doors are open, trying to pull a cooling breeze through the rooms. The corridor is alive with laughter and conversations. A few radios are playing. In the big day room down the hall, there is the sound of pool balls colliding, a pleasing click-clack. Shots being are called. Wagers are being made.

“Hey, cool. I started that rumor,” Riley winks, quite pleased, closing the door behind them. She laughs at the shocked expression on Ellie’s face, suddenly turns deadpan to really needle her as they walk. “No joke. I really did. I like people thinking that’s the reason you got moved from the little kids down on floor one to the grownups up here on floor five. I told ‘em I keep you naked and chained to the foot of my bed at night.”

“You cock gobbler! How can you tell people that stuff about me?”

“Because it’s true,” Riley coos. “You’re naked all the time when you’re in here!”

“But why did you tell them you kept me chained to your bed at night!”

She speaks too loudly. Heads turn. The rumor spreads some more. A few of the girls up here are hearing it for the first time. Most of the others have already heard it, but now they’re hearing it right from the source. It’s juicy stuff. Riley is a legend on this floor.

“You don’t do _that_ , Riley!” she hisses, trying to keep her distressed voice low. Too little, too late. The rumor will spread fast now. A few girls are peering out of their doors as Riley and Ellie pass by.

_Though I kind of wish you would. That might be fun._

“Pfft. You’re just a poor, scared little girl who I won in a card game and everyone can see that I’m so incredibly nice because I’m taking care of you instead of putting you out on the sidewalk in a cardboard box that says ‘Free To A Good Home’ or something,” Riley says breezily, making sure she speaks just a little too loudly. “Hell, I’m practically a saint. Anyone else would have given you away to a straggler by now.”

“Ah! No! But everyone knows you _suck_ at poker. If anybody won anyone here in a card game, I woulda won you,” Ellie teases, rubbing her still-stinging bottom, trying to keep her voice low, trying to keep the building excitement from slipping out into her words. “And I woulda traded you for someone who treats me nicer. Way nicer. The way me and my poor little butt deserve to be treated. Hell, I might’ve traded you for two or three Batman comics, just to have some peace and quiet. Shit, I’d trade you for a lame Archie comic, you twat waffle.”

“Fuck you, Ellie,” Riley laughs. She leans close and whispers to her. “You and your cute little butt are damn lucky to have me, even if you never remember to do the laundry. Hell, you should be grateful that I’m feeling so generous today. Otherwise, tonight I might have to spank your sweet ass for forgetting to do the laundry again. _Spank you hard_.”

“Damn, Riley! Don’t even joke!” Loud. More heads turn.

What were these two talking about now? Giggles. Speculation. More heads turning. Ellie is not used to being the center of attention in this way. Riley is the undisputed bad girl of this dorm and she is helping Elli to fit in, in her own way. Ellie realizes that Riley is marking her territory, letting everyone know that the little redhead girl is with her, maybe even _belongs_ to her. She is giving Ellie a sort of secondhand kind of cool. Ellie grins, bites her lip, grateful. It’s not a bad reputation to have, really, being Riley’s sidekick and/or love slave.

Ellie blushes, fixes her eyes on the floor, as Riley cackles. Her younger friend was so easy to manipulate. She wants to hug the embarrassed, smiling girl, but there are people milling about in the hallway and there are enough rumors going around about them already. Some of which had actually been started by people other than Riley. No need to lay it on too thickly today. Riley doesn’t graduate until the end of Summer Semester next year.

Plenty of time to get Ellie set up so she can make it when the older girl is gone. Ellie’s eyes are shy. They dart between Riley’s eyes and the floor in front of her. Riley would give almost anything to know what Ellie is thinking, but she has to keep appearances up. She nods at a couple of the other tough girls as she passes the day room with her young sidekick in tow. They nod back. A few even smile. Just as planned.

_Why do you have to say things like that, Riley? Put thoughts inside my head like that? Now I’m going to be thinking about it for the rest of the day. I’ll go to bed thinking about it! Fuck, if I’m lucky, I’ll dream about it! God, why am I so weird? What’s wrong with me? Why do I want you to do stuff like that to me? Spank me and tie me up and stuff. Why? It can’t be normal._

Riley whispers to Ellie. “After lights out, you wanna help me get the rest of that beer down from the ceiling? We can get drunk and play poker or whatever. No sneaking out tonight though. I gotta keep your spankable little ass out of trouble for a while, okay?”

Ellie grins, excited at the thought of trying another can of beer, of spending some alone time with her friend. She puts on her best devious expression. “Sure. But I hope you’re not planning to get me liquored up to take advantage of a sweet, innocent virgin like me.”

“Ha! You wish, Ellie.” Riley’s laugh echoes down the hall.

_Fuck yes, I do._

“Oh, hey! Have you seen my new blue flip-flops, Riley? I couldn’t find them anywhere.”

“Traded them this morning, for those amazingly cool socks I was wearing.”

Ellie sighs deeply. “Of course you did.”

_You’re lucky you’re so damn sexy, Riley. Or else I would have to take a swing at you and get my ass kicked, right here in this hallway, in front of everyone._

_God, I need a spanking so bad._

 

* * *

 

In the semi-darkness of the projector booth, Ellie’s eyes fluttered open.

She was lying on Joel’s sleeping bag, her old army blanket spread over her. It had rained a little during the night, she realized. It was cold and damp in here now. It had been hot when she had lain down. She remembered falling asleep on top of Joel’s sleeping bag. The concrete floor was so hard, he had generously let her use his sleeping bag like a mattress. She had fallen asleep bitching about how warm and humid it was. She shivered now. It was chilly in here. A thick predawn fog was visible just outside the window.

_How the heck did I wind up under this blanket?_

_Joel._

She looked around; saw him sitting up in the corner of the room, by the door. He was fast asleep; his head slumped down against his chest, the shotgun lying next to him, the revolver in his hand. He was snoring.

_Joel, you big softie. You didn’t want me getting cold._

She smiled, pulled the blanket up to her chin, nuzzled against the coarse wool.

_He really does care. A little at least._

She looked around the room. It was so dark when she stumbled in here last night. They had barely had time to check this place out, to see if it was safe. It was well after nightfall when they arrived at the Dixie Star Drive-In Theater. The bike had been leaking some kind of fluid. Joel had patched it, but he said would need time to fix it properly. She wished they’d been able to find another Motel 6 instead. A soft, warm bed was better than a cold concrete floor.

_Why the hell did I dream of Riley? Was it because she was always threatening to make me sleep on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, in the one little spot of the room that she said was mine?_

_God, I miss her so much._

It wasn’t sunrise yet. With any luck, she could go back to sleep and grab another hour of rest. She lay back down, snuggling under the blanket, trying to stay warm. She stared up at the cracked plaster of the ceiling. Listened to Joel snoring quietly behind her.

_I’m trying to do what he does. Bury the past and leave it there, like he says I need to do. But I can’t. I don’t want to. I loved Riley. I still love her. Why should I pretend that she didn’t exist, that we didn’t share that time together? I’m trying, Joel. I really am. But it’s hard._

_It’s so damn hard to let her go._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Riley!! At last!!! Man, I love this girl. :D
> 
> Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister” is the song playing on the guard’s radio. Every quarantine zone would need an outlet for daily propaganda, and WBQZ seemed like a good fit for that.
> 
> The idea of the students being treated more like cadets and being made to wear uniforms (likely hand-me-downs) while in class or on duty made more sense to me that a bunch of kids being allowed to wear what they please. That sort of thing wouldn’t fly in any military school today, much less one that exists in a future dominated by martial law. I’m pretending the kids shown in street clothes in the American Dreams comic were hanging around out of uniform during the weekend or on their off hours after classes. In fact, you see a few students standing in formation, in uniforms. But for some reason, neither Ellie nor Riley are shown wearing them.
> 
> I tried to massage the “join up or get out at sixteen” element of the backstory with how an actual school with semesters and curriculum would have to work in order to provide a complete education for its students. The school year at this school is split into three semesters, each approximately four months long, with very few holidays. At the end of the semester in which you turn sixteen, the student musters out and makes their choice rather than on their sixteenth birthday itself. This gives the student and the school more flexibility towards the goal of completing a student’s education first.
> 
> The “S” stands for Suzanne, Ashley Johnson’s middle name. Ellie can be a diminutive of Eleanor, and the idea of Ellie being stuck with an old-fashioned name she doesn’t care for makes me smile. Just one more burden this world has piled on her little shoulders, I guess.
> 
> For the hopelessly nerdy easter egg hunters, Ellie’s cadet ID number is assembled from pest control / sex phone line gaffe from the game (before it was removed in a patch).
> 
> I’m assuming that Ellie’s birthday is in the late spring / early summer, as she in thirteen in the American Dreams comic but fourteen when she meets Joel in the game, just a few months later. Of course, I’m also tweaking the timeline a bit, shuffling things around so that she and Riley were friends and roommates for more than just the three months that the established facts would allow. Assuming that Riley runs away just days before she turned 16 (and would have to join the military by the end of the Spring Semester), she and Ellie can’t have had much time together. For the purposes of my story, I’ve shuffled things around a bit so their friendship had more time to grow (almost a full year, give or take). It’s fan fiction. That sort of thing happens. ;-)
> 
> Continuity alert: Melody, the cute older girl who speaks to Ellie at the gate was first mentioned in Chapter Ten: A Crowded Room.
> 
> Building T-1, Ellie’s dormitory, takes its name from the original code name used by Naughty Dog for The Last Of Us, back when it was still a secret project.
> 
> I know ‘boo’ is becoming somewhat outdated slang, but I’ve always loved the way it sounds. It’s the cutest term of endearment. And since both Ellie and Riley use such a strange mish-mash of slang throughout the game, I don’t see any reason why boo couldn’t survive as a term of affection.
> 
> As for Ellie being a freshman mixed in with senior girls (I will explain how that happened in a later story), I was stuck for a reason as to why someone as outgoing and friendly as Ellie had such a hard time making friends at the orphanage. The idea of her being ‘bumped up’ among older kids who would resent someone as young (and dorky) as her hanging around them seemed a nice solution to the problem. Your mileage may vary, of course.
> 
> It was really tricky to write the flashback part of the story in the present tense. I haven’t written anything in the present tense since college, ages and ages ago. I had to proofread it again and again, because I kept screwing up the verbs. =P
> 
> Next time around, Ellie and Joel share a moment of honesty and emotional bonding in the early morning mist outside the Dixie Star Drive-In Theater (which is not a real place, unlike many of the places they’ve visited in this story). A kiss may be involved.
> 
> Read all about it in Chapter Fifteen: A Kind Word.


	15. A Kind Word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie finally tells Joel how she feels about him. Kissing may be involved. Other, more explicit things might pop up as well. You have been warned. ;-)

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**  
 **Chapter 15 – A Kind Word**

 

Ellie sat on the countertop of the concession stand at The Dixie Star Drive-In Theater, swinging her legs and keeping an eye on the small, two-lane road up the hill from her. The Winchester, with its cool telescopic sight, rested across her lap. Her shotgun lay on the counter nearby, always within reach.

Sometime during the night, a heavy fog had settled across the little dip between these green hills. She wore Kristi’s old denim and leather jacket for warmth. It was zipped all the way to the top, and she tried to bury as much of her small chin and freckled cheeks inside the popped collar as she could.

On the far side of the clearing, beyond the edge of the cracked and peeling silver screen, a magnificent buck pranced out of the forest. He looked around, regally, surveying his kingdom. Ellie was awestruck by his beauty. Peeking above the pulled up leather collar of the borrowed jacket, her green eyes widened.

“Wow…” she breathed, keeping her voice soft, so as not to scare him away. “Good morning, your majesty.”

“Good morning yourself,” Joel said, coming up behind her, emerging from their little sleeping nook in the projector booth, a little further down the cinderblock wall from the concession stand. He chuckled. “And I like the sound of ‘your majesty.’ Keep using that if you feel like it.”

“HA! You wish,” she sassed him, too loudly as it turned out.

The deer spooked and darted off into the forest. She was amazed at his grace and power, wondered how on earth he could run so fast without catching those incredible antlers on the branches and vines and stuff all around him.

_Farewell, my magnificent king of the forest._

“Shit, Joel. You scared him off.”

_Don’t be too mean to him, Ellie. He was pretty fucking amazing on that motorcycle yesterday. Like something out of a comic book or an action movie. Fucking incredible._

“Scared who off?”

“The deer. The really big one with the antlers, over there by the big screen.” She pointed.

Joel looked, saw only the empty woods and a few dancing branches, disturbed by the buck’s passage.

“Oh yeah? Hell, Ellie. You’ve got the Winchester right there. You shoulda shot him. We would’ve ate like kings tonight.”

“Shoot him? The King of the Forest?! Are you _crazy_?” Ellie boggled overdramatically. She sat the rifle down on the counter next to her, wanting nothing to do with it if such dreadful things were going to be asked of her. She turned to make a face at Joel, noticed he was wearing only his sweatpants this morning, and quickly looked away shyly.

_He should warn me if he’s going to sneak up on me dressed like that. Or underdressed, I guess I should say. I mean, it’s not like I care… A girl could use a little warning, is all._

“King of the Forest, huh?” he teased, mistaking her shyness at his appearance for a sudden squeamishness for killing wildlife. He came around to stand beside her.

“You wouldn’t doubt me if you’d seen him,” she said defensively. “He was huge… gorgeous… big and strong… powerful. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.”

Her words trailed off, her demure eyes fixed on Joel, who was still staring at the place where the deer had been earlier. Ellie began to understand that she wasn’t speaking only of the beautiful buck she had seen a moment ago.

_Wow. I never really looked at Joel up close like this… Man, he’s got some big damn arms._

“Gorgeous, huh? I’ll bet he was delicious too,” Joel kidded her, looking at her just as she looked away.

“I have no fucking idea how he tastes, you ass,” she said, trying to make a joke, but surprisingly, she utterly failed to find a good punch line. This wasn’t like her at all. She was always quick with a comeback.

_Why am I suddenly so distracted by him and his amazing arms? He’s never had this effect on me before. Guys have never been my thing, to be honest. Why am I so rattled by seeing him shirtless this morning?_

“Dee-licous,” he said, lightheartedly dragging out the word to torment her. He leaned back as he spoke, his firm ass settling in against the edge of the countertop, very close to her.

She could feel the warmth of him near her hips, her thighs. She was sitting so close to him now. It wasn’t his fault. The counter wasn’t very long, and she had plopped down in the middle of it. She hadn’t left much room for him to join her. It was her fault, really. She thought about scooting over but decided that she would rather stay right where she was. She unzipped the jacket and slipped it off. She found that she was too warm to need it now, despite the damp fog still hanging in the air.

“I’m sure he is,” she said. She realized that her mouth was open. She closed it, tried to look away, focus on the place the deer had been, or the parked motorcycle, or the broken neon sign bearing the Dixie Star Drive-In logo. Or _anywhere_ that wasn’t his ass in those sweatpants.

_What the fuck is wrong with me? I’ve never looked at Joel this way before._

_Maybe it’s because he’s never looked this way before, Ellie._

_Thanks for pointing out the obvious, Ellie’s inner monologue. Big help you are today._

_Glad to be of service. And remember: you decided last Christmas that you’re probably a lesbian. Boys aren’t your thing, remember? Just FYI and stuff._

_Gotcha. Ellie only goes for the girls. Joel and his stupendous arms aren’t for us. Thanks for the reminder. Do me a favor and dig up some memories of that girl in the Playboy magazine pictures, would you? Some sexy naked images of her might help distract us so we don’t start imagining sexy naked images of him._

_Too late! You’re already thinking of him naked!_

_Oh fuck! I am! Damn it! And he looks incredible naked! Oh no!_

Joel yawned and folded his arms across his chest, making his biceps and upper body look even bigger.

“He could be the most amazing thing ever, but I’ll never know, Joel,” she continued smoothly, as though she weren’t having an argument inside her head. “That’s just not how this girl rolls.”

“’How you roll’? Kids still say that today?”

“Kids say all sorts of cool stuff, old man,” she cajoled, failing utterly to not see the flat stomach beneath his amazing arms, the hair that ran down from the wide swath across his chest, trickling down to a small trail that ran along his belly and disappeared down the front of his sweat pants. She especially tried not to see the bulge at the front of those old, faded blue-gray sweats. Tried and failed. Completely, totally, utterly failed.

_Holy moley. Look at that thing, Ellie._

_I can’t not look at it, Ellie’s inner monologue! And stop telling me what to do!_

“You don’t like venison? Seriously?” he asked, staring at those woods, imagining himself bringing down that big buck, but enjoying ribbing this endearing girl at his side. A crooked smile creased his face.

“Never had it before,” she said, suddenly fixated on his lips. “Never had lots of things before. Doesn’t mean I’m just gonna go around indulging in every whim that pops into my head.”

“Then how do you know you wouldn’t like it? Give it a chance, you might find it suits you, girl,” he said, turning his head to look at her.

She looked down, desperate to avoid being caught staring at his mouth, realized that she was looking at the bulge in the front of his pants instead. Her green eyes darted away to the safety of her shoes, saw that her ankles were crossed, still swinging below her as she sat on the edge of the concession stand countertop.

“I just know what I am – I mean, I know how I am… who I am,” she said, correcting herself, no longer sure if she was having one conversation or two. “That’s just not the sort of thing that ever interested me… I guess.”

“If you say so, Ellie,” he chuckled.

Inexplicably, the sound of her name on her lips made her feel connected to him in a way that shocked her with the sheer intensity of it. He had said her name dozens of times, maybe a hundred times, before now. But at this moment, she was hearing him say it as if it were new to her ears, as if no one had ever said it to her before. Her heart thrilled at the sound of it. A buttery warmness rippled through her belly, moving out from her center in tiny, heavenly tremors.

_Say my name, Joel._

His big hands reached back, taking a firm grip on the counter on either side of his hips. This had the effect of arching his lower back, pushing his chest out. One big hand was less than an inch from her thigh. She tried to swallow, found that her mouth had gone dry.

“I know what I like,” she said, trying hard not to stammer. The words were hers, but she began to doubt the truth of them.

_Jeez, Louise. What the hell is happening to me? I’ve never been interested in boys. Not really. Riley was the boy crazy one. I wasn’t really like that. Sure, there were a few cute ones here and there at the orphanage, but none of them really caught my eye. Not for long, really. Not like this. Not like… him._

_Maybe that’s because Joel isn’t a boy, Ellie. Not by a long shot._

“I’ll take you at your word, Ellie.” He shrugged with a bit of good humor in his voice. His shoulder and back muscles rippled, sending her heart racing.

_Say my name._

_God, I want to say his name. I need to hear him say my name again. I want to take out my switchblade and carve ‘Joel + Ellie’ in this countertop like some stupid little girl with a silly crush on an upperclassman. Fuck, how is he doing this to me?_

“At any rate, I’m sorry I scared your tasty buddy off,” he said.

Ellie blinked. Twice.

“Did… Did you just… _apologize_?” she asked, shocked out of her muddle-headed, barely understood lust by his unexpected words. She smiled. “I don’t think you’ve ever said ‘I’m sorry’ to me before, Joel. I was starting to think that you just didn’t know the words.”

“Yeah, well…” he began, looking down at the dewy grass, at his bare feet. His expression was adorably sheepish, “there’s a lot of things I should have said to you that I haven’t.”

Their eyes met. His were dark, sincere. Hers green and wry.

“Like what?” she said, trying to hold back a larger smile, trying to keep her hopes down. “And why the sudden change of heart?”

He twisted at the waist to get a better look at her. His brown eyes held her firm in his gaze. She was acutely aware of how close they were to each other. She tightened her grip on the edge of the counter, her legs stopped swinging. She watched the morning light glisten in the dark hair covering his broad chest. She could see that his nipples were hard. She realized hers were too. She wasn’t wearing her sports bra this morning. She hoped he hadn’t noticed, she wanted him to notice, she needed both to be true at the same time. His lips were moving, she wanted to kiss them; she tried to make out the words they were shaping.

“Which part do you want first? The what? Or the why?”

“What?” she asked, reflexively licking her lips, not really understanding that she had been asked a question.

“All right. We’ll start with the what.” He turned in place, resting one elbow on the concession stand counter, leaning against it, crossing his ankles, his entire body facing her. She realized how close her hand was to his elbow, how near her calf was to his thigh.

_Gorgeous. That deer has got nothing on this man._

_Fuck! How is he doing this to me?_

_Oh God! I don’t think he even knows what he’s doing to me!_

_That’s what it is! That’s why he’s different from all those annoying boys at the orphanage! He’s not trying to prove anything, not trying to show off for me. Not doing dumb shit to impress me. He’s just awesome and strong and confident and manly and all that stuff without trying too hard to be any of those things. He takes care of me, protects me, talks with me, listens to me, trusts me… And he does it so fucking effortlessly._

_God! That’s it!_

_He’s a man without being a dick about it._

“Here’s the first thing I should have said, Ellie.” He paused, taking a slow breath, gathering his thoughts. His eyes never left hers.

_It’s like he’s hypnotizing me. Clouding my mind with a testosterone fog or shooting me with mind control rays from his testicles or something. Is this how Riley felt when she spent seven minutes in heaven with Montego in that closet, the night of Melody’s going away party? It has to be. Riley didn’t stop talking about it for two damn weeks._

“I should have said ‘thank you’. Thank you for saving my life in Pittsburgh. I didn’t and that was wrong. I’m not used to needing other people. It’s not my way, yeah?” He looked to her as though he needed her to understand.

“I know,” she said, no longer smiling, wanting him to know that she appreciated this moment. “I know _you_ , Joel.”

“But we’ve been together a while and I suppose I can finally admit it to myself… and to you,” he said, looking down at her hands resting in her lap, seeing how she twisted her fingers together nervously. “I like having you around, Ellie.”

“Really?” She sounded very much like a little girl at that moment, and she winced internally.

“Yeah. You’re a… well, you’re always there for me. And I need someone like that, I guess.” His face was very serious now, his eyes firm. “I _need you_ , Ellie. It’s not an easy thing for me to say, but there it is. I need you, girl.”

Her stomach quivered. Her eyes lost focus for a second.

“Wow. Thanks, Joel.” She wished she had thought of something more profound to say, wished she didn’t sound like a love struck little girl, realized she was breathing much faster now, discovered her hands were trembling.

_He needs me. Not as much as I need him, not in the way I need him. But it’s more than I could have ever hoped that he would say._

“I haven’t needed anybody like this since… well… Tess.” His eyes darkened at the mention of her.

“I miss Tess,” she said through lips that suddenly felt too full.

“Me too. She was one of a kind.” He reached out, placed his hand on her knee. “And so are you, Ellie.”

_Oh God._

She tried to say thanks, to say that she thought he was special too, to say that she knew she could never replace Tess, to say something, anything. But the feeling of his large hand on her body short-circuited the speech center of her brain. All she could manage was to mumble something that was entirely incoherent, even to her own ears. She studied her shoes intently, afraid to look at him anymore.

_Oh fuck. It’s like electricity or something. Zapping out of his hand and running up my leg, straight to my…_

_Oh God._

“One of a kind,” he repeated kindly, not even able to guess at what she had just said, what she was feeling.

_Is this how Tess felt too? Fuck, how the hell did she not just stuff me in the trunk of the first car they came across, and jump in the back seat with this man? How did she make it all the way from the QZ to the capitol building without ripping his shirt off?_

_How did she manage to concentrate on anything with him around?_

“That’s the other thing,” he said, his voice still very kind and warm. “I did something dumb. Really dumb. I told you not to bring up Tess.”

“Ever,” she nodded, breathlessly, remembering the words, how angry he had been when he had spoken them to her.

“Right. Ever,” he said, remembering too, not proud of himself. “I… didn’t handle that very well. I just wasn’t in the right place in my head, and I took it out on you.”

He squeezed her knee to make his point. She looked up at him again, sure she would drown in his eyes this time, but willing to take the chance.

_Let me drown. I don’t care._

“I took it out on you, Ellie,” he said, his eyes sad, remorseful. “And that was wrong of me.”

“It must have been… um… hard,” she said gently, trying to have only one conversation at a time and already screwing it up. He had never been so talkative before, so open with her, so willing to share himself with her.

“It was,” he admitted. “Tess and I were together for a long time. We were partners, you know?”

She gulped dryly, needing to know the rest. She forced the words out, hoping he wouldn’t shut down the way he always had before, hoping she wasn’t about to screw this up.

“Partners? … As in coworkers? Or… something more?”

Joel looked at her quizzically, amused that she had dared to ask something so personal of him, impressed by her bravery, sad that he had to look inside himself now, at all those old memories he didn’t really want to revisit.

“Sorry.” She spoke so softly, it was barely a word. Her nerves had failed her at last.

“Tess and I were lovers, Ellie.” His voice was bittersweet. He shrugged, willing to let her have her victory, seemingly relieved to have this out in the open, as though it was something he had never admitted to himself before today.

“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say. She had suspected as much, but she had hoped for a different answer.

_I want him for myself. All for myself. Only for myself. It’s crazy, but I think maybe I want him to be a virgin too, like me. _

_But then you’d both be scared shitless with no fucking clue what do right now, dipshit._

_I know, I know. You’re right. What do I do? Keep him talking? Fuck! Has he noticed my hands are shaking? That I can’t stop licking my lips? Has he seen how hard my nipples are? God, he couldn’t possibly not see them as close as we are. Fuck, I hope he likes how they look. My tits aren’t very big, but without the sports bra squishing them down, they have to look a little bigger. Right? God, he’s looking at me. He wants me to say something, I just know it. But what do I say? Do I tell him how pretty I thought Tess was? Is that something a normal, non-weirdo girl would say? What if I blurt out that I think she had some really incredible boobs? That she had a big, firm ass, just the way I like them. Is that something he and I have in common, our shared love of girls with big backyards? No! Tess isn’t a safe topic for me! God, he’s still looking at me!_

_Stop thinking and start talking!_

“And the why?” she asked, sounding as calm and collected as she ever had. She reached across her chest to scratch her shoulder as nonchalantly as she could manage, trying to cover up her small chest, wishing she were more endowed, like Tess.

“Why am I telling you this?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was soft again, so soft she could barely hear herself. He had to lean in a bit to hear her. It wasn’t something she meant to do, but it produced the result she secretly wanted. She made sure to file this little trick away for future use.

“Because, Ellie…” he groped for the words that he found so hard to say.

_Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get your hopes up._

”I’ve come round to seeing you for what you are, Ellie…”

_Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease._

“Which is… what…?” she asked casually, doing her best to sound as though she weren’t a sad, unloved girl desperately in need of someone to care for her, as though she weren’t a young woman about to wet herself from an unbearably erotic panic, as though she didn’t need him in so many ways right now that she could barely list them all, barely sit still.

“After how you saved me from that hunter that tried to drown me back in Pittsburgh… After the way you jumped on that stalker that had me pinned down at the Motel 6… After how you shot it out with those bastards on the bridge yesterday…”

_Say it. Tell me that I’m at least cool enough to keep around. You don’t have to say that you’re feeling what I’m feeling right now. I’m smart enough to know that I’m just a little kid in your eyes, that you can’t see me the way I see you, I know. But at least tell me that I’m worth keeping around. That you’ll stick around and I won’t have to be alone anymore._

“You’re… Well, you’re a pretty brave young woman, Ellie. I really like you.”

“You do? I… am?” She tried to keep her smile from consuming her entire face. She knew she had to play this off as though it were no big deal. Didn’t he know? Awesomely sexy men whom she totally idolized complimented her all the damn time. Big, manly, smoking hot, beefcake-y ones with big arms and big bulges, just like him. They loved to tell how great she was. Of course they did. It was no biggie. It was just another typical day in the life of Ellie Williams, professional sidekick, shotgun toting action chick, biker babe, and badass extraordinaire.

“Yeah. I’m pretty awesome.” She was so smug it almost hurt. Just like Riley would have done.

“Yeah, you are. And funny. Really smart too. And a pretty brave girl too, like I said.” He reached up, gave her small shoulder a friendly squeeze, sending liquid electricity surging through her, to the same destination as before.

_I have to risk it. I can’t let this moment pass or I’ll hate myself forever._

“Um… Is there a comma anywhere in that sentence?” she asked with shy eyes.

_Fuck! Don’t push your luck, you stupid moron!_

_I have to know! I’m going crazy! I can’t think straight!_

_Straight? Fuck me! I’ve never felt this 'straight' in my whole life!_

“How’s that, kid?”

“A comma,” she continued, struggling to keep her voice above a whisper. She found she couldn’t look at him. She focused on her legs instead. “If there’s a comma, then I’m two different things. If there isn’t, then I’m just the one.”

His eyebrow went up inquisitively, suspiciously. Joel was not a lover of grammar.

“Did you say that I’m pretty brave?” She swallowed hard, her nerve almost failing her. “Or did you say that I’m pretty – comma – _and_ brave?”

She smiled adorably, her eyes fixed on her knees, drew her shoulders in, making herself even smaller. She was very nervous. His eyes narrowed, twinkling, the corner of his mouth crinkled in a half-smile. He placed his hands on his hips, as through he were studying her, trying to figure out where this side of her had been hiding all this time.

“The comma makes all the difference, see?” she said, barely able to bring her eyes up to meet his. Green glittered beneath demurely lowered red lashes. She held her breath.

“I think you’re very brave, Ellie,” he said in that deep, rumbling baritone. “ _And_ very pretty too.”

_Boosh!_

His hand came up again, ready to give her shoulder an affectionate pat. Her hand darted up without her telling it to. It slipped around his back, through the opening his arm had made. She felt her hand slide against his muscular body, gently trying to pull him closer.

“Ellie-“ he began, looking down at her rogue arm, trying hard not to see the swell of the soft breasts beneath the fabric of her shirt, the one with the silly dog paw mark on the front; small, tantalizing feminine mounds that were so close to that unruly limb, drawing his eyes in. Her nipples were hard little rocks. He had been trying to ignore them for the last few minutes, but now he couldn’t look away. He parted his lips without realizing it.

She pivoted in place, scooting around on the slick countertop to face him directly. He straightened up, placed his left hand on her waist, ready to push her away. Her other hand joined the first in its mutiny against her, coming up to find the back of his neck. No matter how much she might tell herself she shouldn’t be doing this, her arms had decided that they weren’t going to let this man get away from her. They knew that a moment like this might never come again. They were smarter than she had ever given them credit for being, these troublemaking little arms of hers.

“We shouldn’t…” he said, so close to her now, caught in their half-embrace.

She pulled him closer, as close as she could. When he would come no farther, she leaned in, opening her legs to make room for him between her thighs, inching as near as she dared, half of her butt dangling off the edge of the countertop. His hand slid to the bottom of her hip, held her firmly in place with strong fingers, steadying her. She loved how effortlessly he supported her, found his strength to be intoxicating, wanted to feel those strong hands all over her body. She craved his touch.

“Careful. You’re gonna fall off, girl.” He sounded warm, gentle. Barely gruff at all.

“You won’t let me,” she said, her voice suddenly husky with desire. It stirred him.

Their lips were very close. With shaky fingers, she pulled his head down, closer, until their breaths passed from one mouth into the other.

“We shouldn’t do this,” he said. But he made no attempt to pull away.

“Stop talking and kiss me, Joel,” she murmured. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to kiss a man.”

“I’m your first kiss?” he started to ask, but she didn’t want to answer that question. Didn’t want to lie to him. Didn’t want to talk about Riley. Not yet. She cut him off by bringing their lips together.

It was amazing. Not like kissing Riley at all. The spark was there with him, just as it had been with her. The same thrill. The same desire. But Riley’s lips had been soft, full, the feelings given by those lips were tenderness, sharing. Joel’s lips were thin, rough, chapped. The feeling she took from them was one of being taken, being dominated by the sheer maleness of him, of submitting herself to him willingly, eagerly. Riley made her feel loved and cherished. Cared for. Nourished. Joel’s kiss made her feel smaller, distinctly feminine in comparison to his size and strength. She felt empowered by it, knowing that it was her very femininity that brought out these urges in him, these desires in her. She was the keystone of this moment and she relished it. It was the sort of thing that Riley talked about once, one night when she let her guard down, revealed the soft, vulnerable heart at the core of her, spoke of what she hoped to find one day in this lonely, bitter, fucked up world. Ellie had tried to make sense of it, but it sounded like weakness to her. She understood it now and wished she hadn’t judged Riley so harshly.

_I need this man. I need to be his woman. I can be strong with him when he needs me to be, vulnerable with him when I need to be. He’ll take care of me. I’ll look after him too. He’ll protect me. I’ll defend him. Together, we can take on anyone, accomplish anything. All we have to do is hold on to each other. Forever. For as long as we can._

His whiskers tickled her the sensitive skin of her face and she wondered how those whiskers, these lips, would feel on other parts of her body. She shivered delightedly at the notion. She wanted to feel his mouth on her breasts, experience his lips on her belly, on her pussy, needed to feel the stiff hair of his face mingle with her softer hair down there. She wanted to run her fingers through the curls on his chest. Feel her teeth tug against the trail of hair leading down the front of his sweatpants. Feel the thick, curling hair at the base of him tickle her nose as she took him into her mouth.

_I want to feel my lips on every part of this man. I want to taste him._

Joel pulled away. The kiss had seemed to go on forever, but now she sensed how brief it had been. Soft. Sweet. Almost chaste.

“Ellie,” he muttered, his voice filled with need for her, but also tinged with guilt. It wasn’t too late. They could still stop this. “Maybe we shouldn’t…”

“Or maybe we should, Joel.” She rushed through the words, refusing to let him go, refusing to let him slip away from her by even one more inch. She was brash, defiant, confrontational. Desperate. “Stop treating me like a kid. I’m grown up. Enough to know what I want, at least. And I want you to kiss me again. So don’t feel guilty about this. I don’t. _I won’t_. I promise you.”

He considered her words, weighing them against what he felt had to be wrong, no matter how much he wanted it. He was three times her age. She was too young, she couldn’t possibly know what she wanted from him, from herself, from the world.

But she was so lovely. So loving. So devoted. So very alive right now.

“Are you going to kiss me again? Or do I have to come up there and kiss you?” she whispered from just below his ear.

His answer was another softer, longer kiss. He pulled her in tightly; she felt his big arms around her. She opened her mouth to him, hoping to draw him in. She teased the tip of his tongue with her own, inviting him. He couldn’t resist her any longer. His tongue slipped into her mouth and she trembled at the wonderful feeling of being penetrated by some part of him. She groaned. It felt so right to her.

_I won’t feel guilty about this. I won’t. I would be with Riley if I could be. I know I would. But she’s gone and he’s here and I’m drawn to him in a way I’ve never felt before._

_Not for anyone with balls, at least. That’s for sure._

She giggled into his mouth.

He pulled away again, a thin string of saliva connecting their lips. On a whim, she licked it away with a swipe of her small pink tongue. He thought it was unbearably erotic.

“What’s funny, kid?”

“Just thinking about how glad I am that some crazy old lady didn’t shoot your balls off, Joel,” she lied, concealing her real thoughts, teasing him with that fear that every man seemed to have, happy that the woman was dead and he was still intact.

How on earth could she ever explain Riley to him?

“Jesus! The things you think about, Ellie.”

“What?” she asked innocently. “They’re still there, right?”

She grinned and slid a trembling hand down his belly, seeking out his balls, wanting to tease him, using the guise of humor to provide an excuse for her to do this, for him to allow it. She had never touched a man in this way before. She felt giddy at the prospect of it.

He stopped her hand just inches away from him, just as she felt the drawstring top of his sweatpants beneath the tips of her questing, nervous fingertips. He held her wrist firmly.

“Slow down, girl. One step at a time, yeah?”

He guided her hand up to his shoulder.

“Don’t you want me to –“ she began, her voice silky, but slightly confused. Wounded.

“Very much, Ellie. But let’s not rush this, okay?” He brushed her bangs out of the way. She nuzzled her cheek against his hand. “I don’t want you to regret anything, Ellie. Not one single moment of this.”

She slid down from the countertop, stepped close, put her arms around his waist, squeezed herself against him. She could feel it pressing against her flat, tingling belly. It was hard and warm. They both shuddered at the contact. Another forbidden bridge crossed.

“I _won’t_ regret it, Joel. Not a single moment of it.”

She slid her hands up his hard stomach, over his bare chest, reaching up, bringing her fingers together behind his neck. She stood on her tiptoes, straining with her lips to reach for his mouth. She felt the warm hardness of his member slide against her lower belly and then the top of her aching loins, as she raised herself up. He groaned.

“I’m a virgin, Joel,” she whispered into his open mouth. “And I’m only fourteen. But I don’t plan on being either one of those things forever.”

He laughed huskily, seductively. His hard belly flexed against hers. She felt the rumble in his chest, pressed tightly against her own. It sent a warm ripple through her stretched body.

_God, it’s so big. So hard._

“I’ll go as slow as you like,” she continued, barely audible, her breath tickling his lips. “But I want you to be the one. The one I give myself to. I want you to teach me what to do, how to please you, how it works… Teach me how to fuck, Joel. You can try to delay it as long as you want, old man, but one of these nights, sooner or later, _you are going to take my virginity_ , you are going to make a woman out of me. I _promise_ you that. “

“Jesus Christ, girl.” His voice was low, his grin was sly. She felt herself melting.

“Jesus won’t save you from me, Joel. I’m _going_ to have you. Even if I have to get you drunk at a Motel 6 again.”

He barked with laughter. She found herself being crushed in his arms, she almost swooned, felt herself being devoured by his mouth. The kiss went on and on. The tips of her shoes barely touched the earth, she was held close, suspended by him in his arms. The morning mist disappeared, but neither of them saw it go. She felt his need for her hard and hot against her stomach, driving her crazy with desires she had never known before. This was the sort of thing Riley had described, the sort of thing she said a woman feels for a man, the sort of thing Ellie had been so certain she would never feel for anyone with a dick. Her own searing wetness scorched her, filling her with a thirst she could only slake through him. It was different flavor of the same intense desire than she had known with Riley and she wanted to savor every drop of it. Of him.

_Baby steps. We’ll go slow. There’s plenty of time between now and Jackson. Plenty of time to let me seduce me, take me, make to love me. There’s no rush. No guilt. Riley always said I needed to kiss a few boys anyway. She thought I was a late bloomer. She didn’t understand what I was until it was almost too late. But now I wonder if she was right about me after all. Maybe just a little. I guess so. Riley was usually right about stuff._

_Please don’t me mad at me, Riley. I still love you. I never stopped loving you. He can’t replace you. It’s not the same. You were right. It is different with a man than it is with a woman. Both are good. Just different. You understood that. I get that now. So please don’t be mad at me. I need this. It’s okay, right?_

_Please let it be okay._

She sensed that he was struggling with his own thoughts of guilt and wrongdoing. He wondered if Tess would understand why he was trying to find comfort in the arms of this young girl. Tess had been understanding about a lot of things. But could she ever forgive this transgression? Would she want to tear Ellie away from him, to save her from him? Or would she nudge Ellie towards him, feeling a kinship for the lonely girl, knowing from firsthand experience how cold and sad this world could be?

He didn’t know. Wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

_We need to stop. I want him inside me. I need him inside me. If we don’t stop kissing, I won’t be able to hold back. I think I’m ready, but I’m a little scared. We should wait until I’m not scared. How do I ask him to stop? I just asked him to start again. God, he’s gonna think I’m an idiot. A dumb little girl who doesn’t know what she wants._

He made the decision for her. She loved him so much for it. He let his lips slip from hers. This time his tongue met hers when it darted out to lick his lips. She grinned. Her eyes sparkled. It was becoming a game they played.

They were both taking in air in hard, ragged breaths. She slid down against him, pressing her warm stomach against the length of him, stroking him with her belly, as he lowered her to the ground.

“We gotta stop, Ellie,” he gasped. “While I can still put the brakes on this thing.”

“Okay.” She stepped back from him with great reluctance, her navel already missing the comforting and frightening presence of his hard cock. She looked down, could see him now, see _him_ , see the thing straining at the front of his sweatpants, stretched taut by the size of it. Not as big as the ones in Bill’s magazine, but still pretty impressive. Need for her had made it even larger than it had been before, that morning in the motel when she had studied it for quite some time. It had seemed even bigger when it was pressed against her. She could only imagine what it would feel like inside of her.

_I don’t know if I’ll even be able to manage it… I don’t know if I’m big enough for all of it… But, holy fuck, do I want to try._

“God, Joel…” her words were thick in her mouth, her tongue felt too large, her whole body was charged with a fiery lust. “That thing’s…intimidating.”

“Don’t worry, kid,” he said, feeling cocky, his ego pleasantly stroked, his body still obviously burning for her. “He’s real friendly. You two will get along just fine.”

“If you say so, old man.” She tried to sound light and carefree, but having never been this close to one before… She supposed they must all look like this, so big and scary, to every girl. The first time, anyway. But scary as it was, part of her craved it, wanted to touch it, wanted to challenge herself to take all of it inside her. To let him into her. Inside her body. To feel herself opening up to him, parting for him, drawing him into her most sacred space. To join with him. With this man. To share herself with him.

So many feelings, all at once, all on top of each other, mixing together. She wanted to lose herself in his arms, to let him lose himself inside her, filling her womb with his desire, his need for her body, his love for her. This was so different than what she had felt for Riley. Wonderful, but in a totally new way.

“Joel…” she said after a long minute of silence. “I…”

His eyes never left her face as hers never left his erection. He smiled, sure of what she was thinking, but actually only getting a very small part of it right. Even at fourteen, she was enough of a woman to be a mystery to him.

“What is it, Ellie?”

Her eyes remained locked on his erection, still straining against his pants. One of her hands drifted across her stomach, caressing herself, stoking the small fire that was now kindled inside her.

“Tell me I’m a good girl.”

“What?” Not at all what he expected her to say.

She looked up at him, her eyes wet. Her hand left her belly, pressed against his chest, just over his heart. Was she about to cry?

“Tell me I’m a good girl. _Please_.”

“Ellie – ”

“I try so hard to please you, Joel. All the time. It’s all I think about most days. I want you to be proud of me. And I want to know that I’ve done a good job so far. Not just with this… moment. But with all of it. The subway. The sewers. The hunters. The bridge. I’m trying so hard to be good for you. I want so much for you to think of me as something other than… cargo.”

He winced at the word, the description he and Tess has used regarding her, labeling her, diminishing her. They’d said the word with her standing right there. Said it to her face.

“ _I’m trying so hard_. Joel. I want to be a good girl for you. I’ve never been a good girl in my whole miserable life. But I want to be so good for you. I want for us to be friends. I want us to be… more than friends, I guess. I just need to know… know that I’m doing okay so far. Please tell me I’m good. Lie to me, if that’s what it takes. I won’t care.”

_That’s what I want more than anything. A kind word from you. It’s so fucking pathetic, I know. But there it is._

Joel smiled warmly, reached out to touch her cheek. With his thumb, he wiped away a single tear that had begun to slip down her face.

“You’re a very good girl, Ellie. I’m so proud of you. You’re the best, funniest, bravest, most beautiful young woman I’ve ever known. And that’s no lie.”

She smiled in a way that lit up his heart. She dashed to him, hugged him, felt herself folded into his arms. She felt warm, safe, wanted. Like a good girl should be. She felt him hard and needful against her and that felt good too. Her tears were joyous and ran down his hairy chest as she rested her head against him. She felt him cradle the back of her neck, softly kiss the crown of her head.

“You’re such a good girl, Ellie Williams.”

“Joel…”

Too many emotions to handle rushed through her. The hot lust for him was momentarily reduced down to a simmer, but it had been replaced with something more. Genuine love. The kind of love that she had craved for so long. The lust would return soon enough, and bolstered by love, it would burn her with a heat so intense that she would happily let it consume her. She wanted to be his, in every way, and very soon.

“Thank you, Joel.”

_Wait…_

_I never told him my last name. How did he know?_

Resting her head against his hard chest, she opened her eyes and saw the little trail where the deer had disappeared before. Riley was there, leaning out from behind a bush, grinning devilishly, and giving her young friend an enthusiastic thumbs up. That shitty old Polaroid instant camera hanging from her neck by its ratty vinyl strap. In her other hand, she was shaking a photo, trying to make it develop faster.

_Oh, God. She took a picture of us. What were we doing when she snapped it? Kissing? Was I crying? No, that’s not the moment she would wait for. She would want a picture of me…_

“Good job, boo!” She mouthed the words silently and Ellie smiled. “He’s old, but he’s hot!”

Riley held up the photo, even at this distance, Ellie could see herself staring in rapt fascination at Joel’s huge boner. Her intense, lusty stare was captured on film for all time.

Riley, evil mocking bitch that she was, did her best to mime Ellie’s open mouth, wide eyed expression. She would never let Ellie live down that embarrassing moment. She was sure to show it to every girl on their floor.

_Damn you, Riley. Did you set this up, just so you could finally get me to give kissing guys a try? Just so you could get a picture of me looking at his hard-on? Come on! Have you seen it? We both know that half the reason you took that picture was just so you could have a picture of his dick to drool over. You’re jealous, aren’t you? You should be! Little Ellie finally lands a man and he’s well hung. Score one for me!_

Riley pretended to lick a certain part of the picture with her tongue, tormenting Ellie.

_God, you’re such a scheming bitch sometimes. You’re lucky we’re best friends or I’d march over there and smack the shit out of you. And then you’d kick my ass, of course. But I’ll have made my point._

_Just like old times, I guess._

_And how the hell did you even find us out here? We must be a thousand miles from Boston by now._

_Wait…_

 

* * *

 

Ellie sat up with a start. She looked around. Joel was nowhere to be found. She was still lying on his sleeping bag. Her army blanket was twisted around her. Mid-morning daylight was pouring in from the projector window. The door leading outside was shut tight.

She tried to calm down, told herself to take deep, slow breaths. She rolled over to have a better look around, squeezing her thighs together as she did. She was incredibly aroused, as if there had been any doubt. She pursed her lips, whimpered softly.

_Fuck. I’m so wet…and swollen. God, I’m really horny. I’m burning up._

“What the fuck kind of dream was that?” she asked the empty room, speaking softly, feeling flush, wanting to push the dream from her confused mind, but trying hard to remember it. Hating herself for the struggle going on inside her head… her heart.

_He’s not like that, Ellie. He’ll never be like that._

She shuddered, still in the grip of those imagined arms… his arms. Still feeling a hardness, firm and warm against her fluttering belly. She took more slow breaths, trying to force her aching, yearning body back to its normal state, trying to drive away the wet heat, the lust… the unleashed desire… for him.

Her voice was faint, hoarse, needful. “I need to find Joel… but not until I get this under control.”

_He can’t see me like this. Not like this. He wouldn’t understand. He’d freak out. He'd send me away. He'll never speak to me again._

_Breathe. Just breathe._

The breathing trick wasn’t working. It had always worked in the past.

_Even that first time Riley fell asleep with her arms around me. That Christmas morning when we slept in the same bed because it was so damn cold in our room. The day the radiators stopped working on that end of the dorm. She had her arms around me, sleeping quietly. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to… Her body felt so good against mine. I wanted to touch her. Caress her. But I didn’t dare. I didn’t know how she felt yet. Didn’t know she would have probably let me. If I was just a little braver. God, I was so fucking horny. Just like I am now. I breathed and breathed until I was able to calm down. Until I was able to fall asleep finally._

_So why the fuck isn’t it working now?_

She knew she needed to find him, and soon. He might be in trouble. But she couldn’t face him, couldn’t look at him, couldn’t let him see her… not like this. Not until she had sorted out her feelings for him. Not until she got rid of the pictures that stupid dream had put in her head. Not until things were back to normal.

_He doesn’t think of me like that. I don’t think of him like that…Okay, I do… I guess… but I shouldn’t. I can’t. I won’t. I’ll fuck everything up if I do. _

_He’ll think I’m some sort of weirdo loser. A horny little unloved girl with daddy issues. That’s not me. I’m stronger than that. Better than that. I’m the boss, not my stupid pussy._

_God, why won’t this feeling go away? Why am I so fucking wet? Fuck! It’s getting worse! What am I going to do?_

She shuddered, glad she was alone in the room. Glad no one could see what she was about to do.

_I have to take care of this. I have to. I can’t think straight until I do. Fuck! I’m on fire… my whole damn body is hot… I’m hot…so fucking hot… for him._

She pulled the blanket over her, even thought the morning air was warming up. She rolled over on her side, away from the door and the window, pretending to be asleep. She scissored her thighs apart, one slipping away from the other just a bit, revealing herself. Not much really, just a little. Just enough. The denim seam of her jeans stretched tightly against the soft mound between her legs, pressing against her inflamed cleft. It felt so fucking good. She was engorged, aching. She reached down to unzip her jeans, trying not to writhe as she tugged the seam away from her delicate, tingling flesh. The blanket hid her hands as they slipped inside the denim flap, pushed her damp panties aside, found the tender spot that she so badly needed them to find.

“Ahh!” Her soft, stifled cry sounded very loud to her in this empty room. Her eyebrows knitted together, angry with herself. She would have to be quiet if she were going to pull this off.

_It won’t take a minute. I’ll do this and then I’ll be back to normal._

“Oh God…” she groaned, her tongue running along the edge of her teeth. She pretended they were his teeth, his lips.

_Just a few more seconds. Almost there. Then I can let this stupid dream go._

“Oh fuck… yes… Joel…” She bit her lower lip, tried to stifle a groan from the heat building in the depths of her belly. She could feel it rising, warming her, lifting her. She pretended the fingers touching her belonged to him. She paired her fingers together, making them feel thicker, more like his. She pretended her arms were tied behind her back. That’s how he wanted her, helpless. She couldn’t stop him from doing this to her. She could only submit to him. To his burning need. For her. He was _making_ her do this because he _needed_ her to do this.

“Yessssss…”

_Just another minute… And I won’t ever have that dream again. I won’t. I can’t… I can’t… I… I -_

“NNnnnnnngggggg!!” Her cry was sharp, stifled. It slipped out from between gritted teeth. She couldn’t contain it. There was too much that needed to get out. More than she could hold back. She knew she needed to be quiet, but her body needed to be loud. Her body won the battle.

“AHHH-ahhhhh-hhhhhhh…. hahhhh… hhh… hh”

The girl shuddered under the blanket, stiffened… and finally went limp.

She was panting, taking small rabbit breaths, the blanket covering her body rising and falling swiftly as she tried to catch her breath. She gasped, blinked, made her eyes focus, blinked again, looked towards the door.

No one was there. She was still alone. Her secret was safe. She breathed a sigh of relief.

“Cool… Didn’t get caught…” she whispered gratefully, trying to get enough air into her lungs. It was just like Christmas night with Riley all over again. “I’m still the fucking ninja princess of masturbation.”

She giggled. It was a crazy, exuberant sound. It bounced off the walls, coming back to her in waves. She smiled, enjoying the buttery warmth soaking its way through her flesh, taking a mischievous delight in what she had gotten away with on this nice, quiet morning.

She lay there for a few more moments, hands on her belly, feeling the amazing waves of pleasure slowly recede, thinking of him all the while.

_He tied me up. Did that to me. I was so helpless. So wonderfully fucking helpless…I couldn’t stop him… I tried, but he was so strong… so much bigger than me…He tied my hands behind my back…and touched me… touched my… with those big hands of his… I struggled, trying to be a good girl… but he wouldn’t let me… He wanted me to be a dirty girl… He made me… I came so hard… For him…_

“Okay,” she said very softly, conspiring with herself, loving where this new story was going. “ _One_ more time. And then we’ll go find Joel.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a difficult one to write, for the obvious reasons. Michelle was a huge help, start to finish. We went back and forth on several passages, with her offering commentary and helping me to revise where needed, until this particular installment was as tasteful and authentic as possible. I hope no one is too freaked out by it. She and I both remember being that age, and we won’t pretend that we didn’t have similar thought and urges.
> 
> I loved the idea of Ellie discovering her burgeoning femininity not necessarily because of Joel, but through him instead. Ellie sees herself reflected in him in a very different way than she did with Riley. As a teenager, and one who is finding her sexual identity is more complicated than she first thought, she is still finding out who she is.
> 
> And is it a little sad that the thing Ellie wants most from the Joel in her dream is just a little praise? I think it’s also worth noting that Dream Joel is so much nicer and more attentive than Real Joel is. He gives Ellie all the support she needs and praises her for her reliability and hard work. He really likes her and has no problem giving her compliments. Dream Joel was a lot of fun to write, trying to find all the little ways that Ellie would want him to differ from Real Joel. Note also that Joel doesn’t drop his G’s in Ellie’s dreams. Also, he and Ellie are both more well spoken in her dream. Ellie is a reader and I like the idea that she could use more complex sentences than she does, but chooses not to so she can fit in better.
> 
> Lastly, I apologize for the “it was all a dream” rug pull at the end. What can I tell you? Ellie is only fourteen years old, and there’s no way Real Joel would allow something like that to happen. Not until they spend a little more time together, at any rate. ;-)
> 
> Check back in a few days for Chapter Sixteen: The Important Stuff.
> 
> EDIT: changed one word in the notes at the suggestion of a reader. Check the comments for more details.


	16. The Important Stuff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel and Ellie spend a day repairing the motorcycle together. Later that evening, he tells her the important stuff that everyone should know.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 16 – The Important Stuff**

 

Most of the damage was cosmetic. Fortunately, there was half a roll of metallic red tape in one of the storage compartments. Cut properly and applied with care, most of the damage wouldn’t even be noticeable from a distance. Hell, a few older cracks had been repaired by Kristi Chau ages ago, and Joel was only now really noticing them. That sort of cosmetic stuff usually wouldn’t have been of any concern to him, but some light repair work might serve as good busywork for Ellie later.

Give her something to do, he thought. Easy but time consuming. Keep her busy and maybe she won’t ask so many questions today. Keep her hands busy and she won’t be able to crack open that joke book.

I can get the bike patched up and get a little peace and quiet out of her. Two birds with one stone.

He wrapped his hand in a thick rag cut from a Motel 6 bath towel and pried the last few stubborn shards of glass from the broken side mirror.

Can’t believe that bullet didn’t hit my hand. Must have missed my knuckles by a quarter inch. Real stroke of luck right there.

He had already seen the bullet hole in the armrest of her seat and the shallow groove that been scored across the back of her helmet. The discovery of those markings had sent an involuntary shiver down his spine.

I’m supposed to be looking after her and I almost dropped us right into that trap.

She had been so elated afterward. When he had finally put enough distance between them and the bridges, when had finally brought the bike to a halt, she had hopped down, ready to take up her role as sentry, practically brimming with energy. She hadn’t understood that he wasn’t stopping to siphon gasoline or anything. He wanted to check the bike for damage, but he needed to check her first. She was fidgety and nervous, so bursting with excitement after running the gauntlet with him. She could barely stand still.

He pulled her helmet off, his eyes on the bullet scar creasing the red shell. Her eyes were red from all the smoke and dirt they had passed through, but otherwise she had seemed like she was about to pop with exhilaration. She didn’t understand why he seemed so determined to make sure she was okay. She was fine, right? No big deal. Shouldn’t he be checking on the bike instead?

Let me look at you, he had said. Repeated it, when she seemed not to hear him. She settled down, standing very still for him, becoming almost shy as he inspected her for stray wounds. She made a joke about him using any excuse to look at her butt. He had tried not to laugh. It wasn’t easy. She was a funny kid.

He held up the edge of her jacket, two of his fingers sticking through a pair of bullet holes. She had stopped joking after that.

Damn lucky kid, he thought. And tough as nails. Nothing gets to her. She reminds me a lot of Tess in that way.

Joel paused in his work, unmoving for many long seconds.

Damn it. Now she’s got me digging up the past even when she isn’t around. Goddamn it. This shit’s gotta stop.

And where the hell is she anyway?

He started to get up, determined to go wake her lazy little ass up. But he suddenly remembered the red repair tape, and knelt down to fish it out of the storage compartment. Unbeknownst to him, that decision bought Ellie a few crucial moments to finish her business inside the projector room, underneath her woolen army blanket. Neither of them would ever suspect how close they had come to an unspeakably awkward moment.

He poked around in the left-hand cargo compartment, working his way down to the small blue cordura nylon bag that contained the tape. Not for the first time, he remarked on Kristi Chau’s organizational skills. It was amazing how much gear she had been able to fit into this compartment: A bottle of fuel treatment, a can of fix-a-flat, a tire pressure monitor, a bottle of coolant, brake and clutch fluid, fork oil, a small plastic case of tools, and a small blue bag with even more little items stored inside. It all fit together inside this bin like a jigsaw puzzle. The other compartment had even more stuff: food, rope, a few articles of clothing, a nice length of camouflage netting to conceal the bike, all sorts of stuff.

I’ll bet this woman was a whiz at Tetris, he thought.

Inside the small blue bag were assorted repair materials: a few tubes of J.B. Weld, a small tub of Bondo, some fiberglass patches, a hose patch kit, and several different kinds of tape. He pulled the red metallic roll out.

In the distance, on the other side of the bike, he saw Ellie finally emerging from the door of the projector room. She was beaming, happy, almost skipping her way across the grass to the concrete patio area where the bike was parked.

Ought to let her sleep in more often if it’s gonna put her in such a good mood, he mused.

“Gooooood morning, Joel,” she enthused adorably, drawing out the first syllable as sweetly as she could. She wore a charming smile that hinted at a secret she was struggling to keep.

“Mornin’, Ellie,” he said, working the corner of the red tape up, getting it ready to use, not even wanting to know what sort of secret she was keeping. “I sure hope you slept well.”

“I did,” she chirped, sitting down cross-legged beside him. “I feel grrrreeeaaat!”

Joel was instantly reminded of that cartoon tiger from those old cereal commercials. Ellie had never heard of Frosted Flakes, had no idea who Tony the Tiger was. She only knew the phrase as something the older instructors at the school sometimes said to make each other laugh. She liked the sound of it, that’s all.

Damn, she looks ready to take on the world, Joel thought to himself as she scooted close to him to take a better look at all the fascinating things inside the little blue bag.

She was indeed well rested. She had slept almost nine hours, after all. Add to that the fact that she had begun her morning with a couple of very intense, fairly discreet, soul refreshingly splendid orgasms, and now here she was, sitting beside her favorite person in the world who was clearly needing her help with something, and there was simply no way that this day wasn’t off to a great start. She clutched at her ankles, rocking in a small circle, bursting with energy and unsure what to do with her hands.

“So what are we doing?” she asked, overflowing with good cheer, clapping her hands together once, rubbing them together excitedly, ready to get started on whatever this was.

“I’ve never seen you in such a good mood, kid,” he remarked, one eyebrow raised, smiling lopsidedly. “And for you, that’s sayin’ something.”

“Ummm… I must have really slept well,” she hedged, changing the subject as fast as she could. “Come on already! What are we _doing_ today?”

“ _We_ ,” he began, placing enough emphasis on the word to made her eyes glimmer, “are patchin’ up all the holes in this bike. And _you_ are gonna watch me do this one right here.”

He indicated a small round hole in the lid of the cargo box. She looked at it with great intensity.

“Bullet hole. Right?” She asked, not wanting to think about how close that hole was to where her calf muscle had been when that particular bullet had come screaming along.

“Yep.” He was trying not to have the exact same thought.

Very carefully, he used a small pair of scissors from the bag to cut a small square of tape from the roll and applied the patch to the bike, covering the hole nicely. He smoothed it over with his large fingers and she marveled at how gentle and precise his big hands could be when he tried.

“There. And now you know how to do it.”

“Ahhhhh,” she nodded shrewdly, taking the tiny scissors as he passed them to her. “And now you’re gonna make me do _all_ the rest of them, aren’t you?”

“Smart girl.”

She giggled. “So is this something that _needs_ to be done? Or is this something to shut me up and keep me busy for a while?”

“Smart girl.”

She snorted and rolled her eyes. Because she was feeling particularly daring, she shoved him playfully. He shoved her back, just as playfully but much more powerfully. She fell over dramatically and lay on her side, laughing and waiting for sympathy that would never come. After a moment, he pulled her up by her arm, ready to place the roll of tape in her hand. She giggled the entire way up.

“Get to work, lazy bones.”

“And be quiet, right?” She narrowed her eyes in mock seriousness, smirking cutely.

“Like I said: You’re a smart girl.” He tried to hide his smile but couldn’t. “Don’t make me keep sayin’ it, kid.”

 

* * *

 

The last piece of tape had been carefully measured and cut. Ellie applied it very carefully, the pink tip of her tongue held between her white teeth give her that extra bit of precision.

At least it put a stop that tuneless whistling, he thought.

Joel sat next to her, wrapping a wire bundle with electrical tape. It had taken a bit of damage from flying glass. The insulation that sheathed the old wires was badly cut in a few spots, exposing the copper underneath. The last thing he needed was for the engine to short out and die if he hit a puddle or got caught out in a rainstorm.

“Annnnnd…. Done!” she announced, with a brief, celebratory air guitar solo. “Woo!”

She was standing to his right, her thighs very close to his shoulder. He was doing his damnedest to not feel the warmth coming off her. Ever since that night at the Motel 6, he had begun to notice her in new ways and it bothered him greatly. He didn’t think of himself as one of those creepy, sicko types who chased after girls her age. In fact, he and Tess had always turned down work trafficking young girls for just those sorts of men on numerous occasions. Tess had even gone so far as to leave a bullet in the head of one especially odious old monster who refused to let them walk away from a deal that the sweaty, fat fuck considered particularly lucrative for all parties involved.

Hell, I beat Phil half to death and kicked him out of the crew after I caught him in that run-down old K-mart bathroom, fondling that little orphaned girl. Phil was supposed to be searching the store for supplies and he found her living in there instead. She was six or seven, sure, half Ellie’s age, but the point’s the same. I rescued that girl. Saved her from him. I’m not into kids. Never have been.

She looked down at him. She could tell he was a million miles away. She wanted to ask him where he was, but he never talked about this stuff.

_Hell, he denies he even thinks about the past. Tries to make me believe he’s always in the here and now. He tells me the past is in the past, and it’s no use to anyone anymore. But if that were true, he wouldn’t have the bad dreams he does. He wouldn’t drift away sometimes, like he’s doing right now._

_How many bad things have you seen, Joel? How many of them were things you did?_

The wires were wrapped thoroughly. The roll of black electrical tape was still stretched taut to the wire bundle. He stared at the repair job without seeing it.

Fuck, he thought, we drove Phil ten miles out of that town before dumping him on the side of the interstate, just to keep him away from that poor girl. I was happy to leave it at that. Phil was a dead man. Nobody makes it alone out here, especially not in the south, not down in Georgia, where cordyceps takes root everywhere. But Vic wasn’t taking any chances. There was something personal going on there. Vic broke Phil’s glasses and put a bullet in his dick before getting back on that Suzuki and leaving that sick fucker half-blind and howling, there on the edge of the blacktop of I-95 as we all drove off without him. Can’t say he didn’t deserve it.

I wasn’t into young girls then. I ain’t gonna to be that way now.

He took a deep breath, let it out very, very slowly.

I ain’t.

But it’s not gonna be easy. There’s just something about her… Goddamn it.

Joel liked his women a little older and a lot curvier. More like Tess. But this one had her charms, as much as he didn’t like to admit it. Her vivacious personality. Her funny, quirky ways. These made up for whatever curves she hadn’t quite developed to their full potential yet. Plus, she was so damn adoring and attentive. Still, it wasn’t like him to notice girls her age and he was unsettled by it.

It’s because there aren’t any distractions, he realized. No one else around. Just me and her. All the time.

She sighed loudly as she placed her hands on her young, shapely hips, ready for him to say something, anything about the quality of her work.

Damn, why couldn’t you be younger? So young that I couldn’t see you in that way? Or older? _Old enough_ , at least. Why does you have to be in between like this? God, it makes me feel so fuckin’ _messed up_.

“Wellllllll?” she asked at last, tapping one foot. “Does everything look okay?”

“Looks just fine.” His words were as distant as his thoughts.

Better than fine, he thought, seeing her thighs out of the corner of his eyes, and grimaced, wishing like hell that he wasn’t noticing such things.

“No, it doesn’t,” she huffed, her feelings hurt. “Or you wouldn’t be making that face.”

Damn it! Get your shit together, Joel.

He snapped out of it, looked up at her, trying to put on his best face. “It’s not that, kid. It’s this damn wire bundle. It gave me a hell of time. You did a real good job. The tape you put on there is nice and smooth. No water or anything is gonna get inside the fairing now. Good work.”

“You mean it?” Her voice was hopeful but with a hint of doubt. She knew Joel was not a man who gave compliments lightly.

“I mean it. That’s real good work, Ellie.”

“Cool.” She was pleased. She patted her hands lightly against the sides of her thighs, drumming a quick, happy beat. “Okay, now what?”

“Hand me those little scissors you were using.”

Ellie groaned. “You’re not gonna break them are you? Do you have to break _every_ pair of scissors that you find?”

She extended them towards him in her small hand, her eyes sparkling with mirth.

“I ain’t gonna break ‘em. They’re too little to make shivs out of anyway,” he began. Too little. Just like her. He had to remind himself of that every chance he had when she was standing this close. “Look… here… cut this electrical tape, would you?”

She knelt down, bumping up against him to reach the wire bundle he was holding. She sliced the excess black tape away easily and he snugged the wrapping tight. After a quick inspection, he announced the repairs to the electrical system were complete.

“Did the bike get shot in the wires? Wow! What are the fucking odds of that?” she asked, leaning in to take a closer look.

Ellie was very close to him now. He shifted his weight a bit, trying to put some a little more air between them. Her face was alight with curiosity. Her soft lips were parted.

She takes such a big interest in just about everything. I wish I could see the world through her eyes for just a little while. She still has such a wonder about the world and all the stuff in it. Life ain’t beat her down yet.

He forced himself to ignore how pretty her green eyes were, how full those lips were. He looked at the taped-up wires with determination. He was _not_ going to be one of those sick kiddy fuckers like Phil.

Why the hell couldn’t you be just a couple of years older, he thought to himself for what had to be the tenth time today.

“No,” he heard himself saying. “The insulation got chewed up when we drove through all that flying broken glass. When that car window blew out, remember?”

“How the fuck could I forget it?” Her features asked how he could even ask such a thing.

She remembered the hailstone clatter of glass shards ringing against her helmet, blasting apart into too many tiny sparkles to count as they struck her visor. She reached out to touch one of the faint red lines on his cheek. There were more than a half dozen lines just like that one scattered across his face.

“You should probably let me take another look at your face. These cuts aren’t very deep. But there’s a bunch of them.”

She had washed his face very carefully last night, had insisted on it. He wasn’t even sure why he had agreed to let her do it, other than it had seemed to be the path of least resistance at the time. Ellie could be very stubborn about some things.

It was actually kind of pleasant. The alcohol wipe follow up had stung a little bit, but otherwise, she had been remarkably gentle. She’d revealed that she’d spent the last few months at the academy working in the infirmary for extra credit (and to remove a few demerits), helping the nurses tend to the wounded soldiers. Every student who graduated had to either enlist in the military or go down the social ladder and join the ranks of the poor, hapless ‘civvies.’ Ellie had been hoping to become one of the army medical personnel. She didn’t like violence, didn’t like hurting people. But she didn’t want to be a civilian in the slums, waiting for her name to be called for some suicide work detail outside the walls either. It was the best decision she could make, given the lousy options available to her.

She did good work too. She had cleaned out and stitched up the shallow wound made by the spike point on the reverse of the fire axe head, back at the Motel 6. That had been five days ago, and the wound was already closed and healing nicely.

Joel imagined that if things had gone a different way for her back in Boston, she probably would have made a good nurse.

He took her delicate wrist and gently eased it away from his face.

“I’ll be fine, Dr. Ellie. Thanks.”

Her lips curled into a smile. She wanted to be mocking, disdainful, but couldn’t keep her concern and affection for him from shining through.

“Suit yourself. I’m just trying to save your good looks. Keep all the old ladies chasing after you.”

“Chicks dig scars, Ellie.”

“We sure do.” She narrowed her lovely green eyes playfully at him.

“Cute,” he groused, not sure if she was teasing or sincere about the compliments she was giving him, not wanting to know, really.

He stood up, began to stuff the various rolls of tape back into the small bag. She stood alongside him, quietly watching him tidy up, her hands in her back pockets. From the way her lips kept shifting around, she wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure if she should.

She wanted to tell him that she meant the words sincerely. She was sure that he must have caught the eyes of several ladies back in the QZ. But she couldn’t trust herself not to blurt out Tess’ name. Wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t accidentally reveal that he had caught the attention of her own young eyes as well. She wanted to talk to him, tease him, but was afraid she might screw it up, nervous and skittish as she was. She decided playing it cool and silent was the smartest option. She wished she were more like the Ellie in her dream. That Ellie know how to connect to Joel. That Ellie was a sultry, seductive little temptress. This Ellie was just an awkward girl with a crooked ponytail and unsure hands stuffed in her denim jeans because she didn’t know what else to do with them. This Ellie wasn’t a beguiling, sexy little ingénue; she was a shuffling, tongue-tied little virgin with a crush that she didn’t know how to express.

She sighed softly. She was sure he didn’t even notice her. She was wrong.

 

* * *

 

Joel was kneeling behind the counter of the concession stand, rummaging through old plastic bins. One big yellow container had once held mustard, according to the faded label, but was now full of old washers, bolts, and other assorted hardware. He dumped it out carefully in the little recess where the cash register had one been bolted down, and began to sift through the pile, checking to see if there was anything useful he could use.

“So…” she began, her hand running along the top of the counter, remembering the dream. “You’re telling me people used to buy food here?”

_I was sitting right there. He was standing where I am now._

“Yep.”

“What sort of food?” she asked.

“Movie food,” he replied, not really listening to her.

_He was wearing those sweatpants. The ones I saw him in back at the Motel 6. He was standing right here. Shirtless._

“Movie food?” Her tone betrayed her ignorance. She loved asking him questions, but so often she felt that she must sound like the dumbest person in the world to him.

“You know,” he continued, looking up to make eye contact with her. “Hot dogs, popcorn, soft drinks, candy… Movie food. All you could eat.”

_My ass was hanging off the countertop… right here._

“Mmmm. Candy.” She said, trying to sound as cute as she possibly could. He was looking at her, talking to her – not talking at her, but actually talking _to her_ – and she wanted to keep this going.

_And he reached down with his big hand and slid it under me…_

“And they’d eat it? Right here at the counter?”

_Your hand felt so good on my butt._

His attention had shifted back to the parts. A frown flitted across her face, but she fixed her innocent smile back into place quickly.

_Look at me, Joel. See me._

“Sometimes,” he said, holding up a few machine screws, wondering if he could find matching nuts for them. “But usually they’d take it back to their cars and eat it there.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed with dawning awareness. “So that’s ‘dinner and a movie’, right?”

“Eh. Not exactly. But you’re on the right track.”

_I was standing right here when I kissed him. He wrapped his arms around me and almost lifted me off the ground._

“So I’d walk up to the man behind this counter,” she said, drumming her palms on the flat surface, trying to envision the procedure. “And I’d say…”

_Kiss me._

“Give me ten hotdogs, please...”

_And take your shirt off, please._

“And you’d have to give them to me?”

_You’d look better without one. And the customer is always right. That old sign on the wall says so._

Joel chuckled, put down the handful of cotter pins he’d been sorting by length, shifted his weight, trading one bent knee for the other. “You think you can eat ten hotdogs, huh?”

“I’d try my best,” she answered without hesitation, crossing her arms at his challenge. “Fuck, if I had that much food, I’d eat until I was sick. Sure, I’d puke it all up, probably. Spew little hotdog chunks everywhere. But at least I could say I _tried_ to eat them. And it’s important to try, right?”

“You’d be a lot of fun to take to the movies,” he teased.

“Do you think that puke breath would cut down on my chances to land a good night kiss?” Her eyes sparkled and her smile was sly. She came around to him, standing across the counter from him, planting herself in his line of sight.

“The way I see it,” he said, willing to keep the joke going, “any teenage boy who’d take a wild child like you to the drive-in would have to expect stuff like that, I reckon.”

“Wild child, huh?” She leaned back slightly, confident and cocky. “You think I’d scare most boys away with a reputation like that? That and the puke breath, I mean.”

_It doesn’t have to be a boy, you know. I’m more complicated than that. I wonder what you’d think of me if you knew about Riley._

“I reckon a smart boy would bring a bottle of water and a pack of gum for you.” He chuckled and returned his attention to the pile of parts.

“Very true,” she said smugly. “It would take a _very special_ kind of guy to handle me and my puke breath.”

They both laughed. The moment hung in the air between them. Neither could guess what the other was thinking. Neither dared to hope. Just as the silence began to edge its way towards awkwardness, Ellie piped up.

“Joel?”

He cleared his throat, hoping she wasn’t about to say what he wished he wasn’t hoping to hear. He didn’t look at her when he spoke.

“Yeah?”

“Where the hell are my hotdogs, dude?”

He chuckled. She grinned.

“Seriously, buddy. I ordered them, like, ten minutes ago. The service here is _terrible_. I’m going to have to ask to speak with your manager.”

_Come on, Joel. Play with me. Don’t ignore me, dude. I have to be at least as interesting as those old bits of junk. Right?_

As if reading her thoughts, he stood up, leaned back against the wall where the nacho machine had once been, judging from fun, balloon-shaped words painted on the cinderblocks. She thought he looked very relaxed for a man who had slept sitting up in a corner all night. He smiled, studying her face closely. He crossed his big arms.

“You want chili on those dogs, ma’am?”

“Whoa. That was an option?” She was genuinely surprised. Weren’t chili and hotdogs two separate meals? She’d had both, but never at the same time. Never mixed together.

“Sure,” he nodded amicably. “Chilidogs are sorta a staple of movie food.”

“They served you both? Hotdogs _and_ chili? At the same time?”

“Yeah. The chili was served on top of the hot dog,” He mimed spreading a spoonful of chili along a hotdog.

“You. Are. Shitting. Me.” A smile of pure joy spread across her face. This was almost too much to grasp. Chili on a hotdog. Surely the food of the gods. Kings and queens, they must have eaten chilidogs. But not poor kids like her. Chilidogs were surely out of reach for people like herself, even in the world of plenty he had come from.

“Nope. You could get all kinds of stuff on hotdog.”

“Like what?” She leaned forward with rapt fascination, resting her elbows on the countertop, settling her chin into the cup of her upraised palms. Her eyes danced.

“Chili, mustard, ketchup –“

“Ooh! I like ketchup!” she grinned.

“Sweet relish, dill relish, onions, jalapenos, nacho cheese, sauerkraut, mayo, strips of bacon, ranch dressing, barbeque sauce, salsa, horseradish, pico de gallo, mac and cheese, coleslaw. Hell, you name it and they could put it on a hotdog.”

“W-o-w!” She chortled as she said it, turning those three letters into a word six or seven syllables long, her mind blown, trying to picture all of those toppings, all at once, all piled on the same hotdog.

“Yep. We had amazin’ hotdog technology back then. State of the art stuff, really.”

“So cool. I don’t even know what some of that stuff you listed is, Joel. But it all came in hotdoggable form?”

“Sure. Once scientists put a man on the moon, there wasn’t nothin’ we couldn’t put on a hotdog, Red.”

She rose to the challenge, tried to think of something outlandish. “What about… Chocolate sauce?”

“Hershey’s syrup. Sure,” he gave a playful shrug of his shoulders. “Don’t know why you’d want such a thing…”

_Because I’m a complicated woman, Joel. I’m a puzzle waiting for you to solve me._

“…But I’m sure they could get you some from the ice cream cone machine.” He motioned in the direction of the empty space on the wall where ‘Frozen Treats’ was painted on the wall in faded letters that looked like snow and icicles. “Strawberry sauce or butterscotch. Maybe put some little peanut sprinkles and whipped cream on it too.”

Ellie’s mouth puckered into an adorable little button.

“Hot dog sundae… No… fucking… way…” A breathless, overawed squeak.

Ellie looked around, wide-eyed, as she tried to imagine this world he had come from, with so many little luxuries like ice cream cones, abundant popcorn, and hotdogs on demand with unlimited toppings.

She pictured the giant grassy lot in front of the silver screen filled up with cars, all packed front seat and back with moms and dads and kids, ready to watch The Wizard of Oz or Invasion USA or Dawn of the Wolf or whatever as the sun went down. She could almost hear the murmurs of the crowds, smell the fresh popcorn, feel the press of people crowding around the concession stand, trying to get their movie food and get back to their cars and their loving families before the picture started.

_Everyone was so happy. So safe. Every person here was loved and no one was alone._

She could feel the cold drink in her left hand, the jumbo hotdog smothered in chocolate sauce and marshmallows in her right hand as she carried the treats back to Joel, waiting there on his big red motorcycle, waiting among all the other cars and trucks, among all the other people, waiting for her to come back to him.

Were they here together as a family? Was she here with him on a date? Was he going to take her back to their home and tuck her in later? Was he going to take her to her own house and try to get a good night kiss from her before he left? She didn’t know. Both were good. She would follow his lead wherever it led.

_Just tell me who you need me to be tonight, Joel._

Joel watched her looking around, starry eyed. He knew she was trying to see this run down old dump as someplace magical. He was certain that, however crappy it may have been in its prime, in her mind it must be a place of wonder.

She’s got a way about her, he mused. Surrounded by all the shit in this world, knee deep in it sometimes, and none of it seems to touch her.

“Man, this place must have been so _cool_ back then,” she said, her eyes finally focusing on the here and now again, on him. “Did you ever go to a place like this?”

“All the time,” he lied. Drive-ins were already on the way out back before he was even half her age. But she didn’t need to know that. Sometimes a lie was the best gift you could give someone.

“What movies did you see?” she asked, hopping up on the countertop and swiveling around on her butt so that she could face him. She crossed her ankles and leaned forward at the waist, dying to talk to him about this sort of stuff.

“All the classics, of course. Unforgiven, Open Range, The Outlaw Josey Wales.” He kept his eyes fixed on hers while he spoke and she could feel herself falling into them.

“Ever see The Wizard of Oz?” she asked, needing to blink but willing herself not to.

“Sure. Those flying monkeys creeped me the hell out.”

“Oh God! Me too!” Her plump little mouth was open in joy. He tried not to look at it. “Creepy little fucking things! Who puts little hats and vests on a monkey, right?”

“Yeah. I was six or seven when I saw it. Watched it on TV with mom one night. She loved that movie. I gave it my best shot, but I just couldn’t get past those damn monkeys.”

She giggled and kicked her feet. The image of little Joel, scared and squirming about on a sofa with Momma Joel was incredibly cute to her. Too cute for words.

“What about Invasion USA? Ever see that one?”

“That old Chuck Norris movie? Sure. Had that one on DVD.”

Her eyes opened wide, her mouth shaped itself into a perfectly round O of surprise. “Ohmygod! You’ve seen it?! _Me too_! It’s, like, the _greatest movie ever_! Right?”

“It’s pretty good, yeah. I always wanted a fan boat like the one he had.”

“Oh God! Me too!” She hopped down from the counter to join him, shifting around excitedly. “Let’s go to a swamp, Joel! How far is Florida? I wanna see a crocodile!”

“Alligators,” he corrected, discretely taking half a step to the side, trying to give her a little room. Her hands were flying around excitedly, he didn’t want to feel them brush against him, didn’t want to risk physical contact, not when she was so close, so full of life, not in the shameful state of mind he was in.

“Fucking _dinosaurs_!” she exclaimed, indifferent to the distinction. “Those things are, like, the fucking coolest things _ever_!”

“Yep. Dinosaurs are pretty cool.” His hand drifted to his watch, his mind going back to about another little girl who had shared his silly love of dinosaurs.

Maybe I should put a stop to this, he thought. Maybe this isn’t a conversation I should be having with her. She isn’t Sarah. Maybe I should keep dinosaurs a Sarah thing. I need to -

“Fucking A, they are! Did you ever see The Empire Strikes Back?” She was revved up, switching subjects quickly.

He blinked quickly, back in the present again, shifting gears to keep up with her.

“Hell, kid,” he said rather pleased with himself. “I’ve seen _all_ the Star Wars movies.”

She stopped moving.

“How many are there?” she asked in hushed, overawed tones.

“Six.”

“No. FUCKING. _WAY_!”

“It’s true.”

“Shut up!”

“Swear to God.”

“Stop lying! Don’t tease me like this!” Her hands came together in a pleading gesture, begging him not to do this to her. She was so good! Don’t be mean! Her face implored him, her voice overdramatic and beseeching. Goofy and charming, in that way that only Ellie could be. “All your fancy talk of ice cream trucks and chilidogs with marshmallows on them and fancy little bars of tasty soap? I can handle those fairy tales. But please don’t torture me with lies about made up Star Wars movies, Joel. Don’t! Pleeeeasseee!”

She wiped a pretend tear away with an exaggerated motion of her finger, sniffling adorably. Her hand went to her chest, covering her heart, pitiably. Her voice became cartoonishly soft and strained. “My poor little orphan heart couldn’t take it.”

“Not pullin’ your leg, kid. There were six of them. Empire Strikes Back was only the second one.”

She looked at the concrete floor, trying to absorb his words, struggling to come to grips with this new world she suddenly found herself in. She gulped audibly, and only partly for dramatic effect.

“Joel?”

“Yeah?”

“If I pass out in a second, please don’t let me crack my head on the floor. Okay?”

“I’ll do my best, squirt.”

 

* * *

 

The teenage girl sat in the grass, the campfire warming her legs, toasting her bare toes in the wonderful circle of heat. Dark clouds were gathering overhead. It might rain later. Joel was sitting next to her, on an upturned milk crate. He had set out every container he could find to catch any water that might fall. Her mess kit was in her lap. It was almost identical to his. She had found it in that stash of supplies the dead woman in Johnstown had left behind. Closed, it made a nice, compact oval of stainless steel. Opened, it split to reveal two shells, one a bowl with two partitioned spaces, the other a cooking pan with a flip down handle that doubled as a latching strap to hold the entire thing together. There was even a small vinyl envelope inside that held flatware for her to use. She loved it, doubly so because it was so much like the one he had.

She had scraped the bowl clean of the chili beans that Joel had cooked for them. She had been hoping for meat, but you took what you could get in this world. An almost empty can of mixed fruit was in her hand. Several bits of the stuff were packed into her cheeks as she talked to the man sitting next to her. He was idly whittling a bit of wood into an interesting shape with his trusty little ‘Old Timer’ knife.

“Soh lehh meh geh hif frayhh…”

“Ellie,” his voice was flat, these words weren’t new to him. “Chew your damn food. Don’t make me say it again.”

She swallowed audibly; the mostly unchewed food went down a little painfully.

“Ow. I said ‘so let me get this straight,’” she repeated, rubbing her throat. “So Yoda gets his ass kicked and just _runs away_? Why didn’t he come back with Obi-Wan and fight the Emperor again?”

“I always wondered that myself, to tell you the truth. He only barely lost to the guy.”

“And Obi-Wan hides on that desert planet – what was it called again?”

“Tatooine.”

“Right. Tatooine. He goes there to hide with Luke? But isn’t that where Vader’s from? And if that guy, Owen, was Darth’s stepbrother, wasn’t Obi-Wan worried about Vader coming back there one day? What if Darth wanted to check in with his old friends? You know. Show off a little. Impress them with his shiny armor and his fancy cape and stuff?”

“I guess Vader never thought to find out what happened to Obi-Wan.”

“Fuck…” she said, letting the word drift away on the chilly evening breeze. “And all this time, I thought Darth Vader was so smart.”

“I try not to think about the second set of movies, kiddo.” Joel waved their shared concerns away with a single sweep of his hand. He had carefully omitted Jar Jar Binks from the story entirely. He liked this girl and he was trying to be kind to her.

She leaned over into his personal space, her eyes serious. “Okay. And just so we’re clear here… Leia. She was Luke’s _sister_ the whole time?”

“Yep.”

“Blech!” She made a disgusted face and flapped her hands wildly.

Joel chuckled.

“That’s so fucking _gross_! Why didn’t Obi-Wan say something?” She did her best spooky ghost voice, “Luuuuuke…you must go to Dagobah for training… And also, please stop making out with your sister. It’s veeeeerrrrry creeeeeepyyy, Luuuuuke.”

Joel laughed.

She looked at him, his features warm and soft in the glow of the small fire. “ _Please_ tell me that making out with your sisters wasn’t acceptable in your time.”

“Incest? Not too much, no,” he shrugged, and rolled his eyes. “Welll… Maybe in the south, I suppose.”

“Say… Wasn’t Texas in the south?” Her eyes twinkled in the firelight.

“Zip it.”

She giggled.

 

* * *

 

She lay in the darkness, listening to the first drops of rain falling outside. A damp chill had set in. Joel’s sleeping bag was soft and pleasantly fuzzy around her, keeping the cool night at bay. She snuggled just a little deeper into it. It smelled like him. She sniffed it discretely and smiled.

“You know, Joel,” she said to the darkness. “You don’t have to sleep sitting up like that. You can have your sleeping bag back.”

_Please don’t ask me to get out of this thing. It’s warm and fuzzy and awesome. You’ll have to set me on fire to get me out of here. Please be a gentleman and let a lady have your sleeping bag on a cold night. Please please please._

“It’s all right, kid. I’ve got this blanket of yours.” Somewhere in the corner of the room, he was sitting up, gun ready, her green wool army blanket wrapped around his body like a shawl. It smelled faintly of her.

“If you say so.”

_Thank you, Joel. You are awesome._

“Don’t fret over me none. I’ll be fine, kid.”

_No, you won’t. It’s raining. It’s cold. Now come over here and lay down with me. There’s enough room in here for two. I don’t take up much space. I’ll let you put your arm around me. It’ll be nice. You’ll see._

She didn’t have the nerve to say the words. She wanted him near her. She wanted to share the sleeping bag with him, to feel his arm around her again like that horrible night they sat up, huddled together in the dirty tool room of the little airport. But this would be different. Better. They were safer here. His arm would be just as big and wonderful as it had been that night, but she would feel even safer with it wrapped around her now. This was a better place to sleep and she was thinking about him differently now than she had before, when they were in the tool room. She wasn’t afraid of him, of his hands. He got angry, but never at her. He protected her, took care of her. She was cozy and warm tonight because of him.

_Things are different between us now._

She sighed contentedly at the thought.

_Why do you keep doing this to yourself? He’s never going to see you like that._

_Well…maybe… one day. In a few years. When I’m older. More filled out. Assuming my tits get their shit together and I don’t get eaten by a clicker or some bullshit like that._

_I have to find a way to keep him around until I’m a little older._

She heard him yawn.

“G’night, Ellie.”

“Night, Joel. Thanks for telling me all about the Star Wars movies. This drive-in was the perfect place for it.”

He chuckled softly. She was right. He had used the big screen behind them to show here where things had happened in the movie. It had been a great visual aid.

“Yeah. I guess it was, huh?”

“And thanks for telling me all about how sexy Princess Leia looked in that slave girl outfit.”

“Hey now. I was _trying_ to gloss over that part,” he said defensively. “You were the one who kept stoppin’ the story to come back to that part.”

“Hey! Don’t blame me,” she said gleefully. “I’m young and curious. It’s perfectly natural. You’re the one who’s the pervert. Admit it! You _liked_ how she looked in that outfit.”

“I sure as hell did!” he laughed.

“God! You’re such a perv! Do I even want to know how many women you’ve kept on leashes, dressed all skimpy and stuff?”

“None of your damn business, kid!” His laughter echoed around the small room. “And not nearly as many as I’d like, I can tell you that!”

“Oh! Fucking _pervert_! God, I don’t know if I’m safe in here with you! I need an adult!” Her giggling was high, infectious.

“Jesus Christ, Ellie! Knock that shit off!”

Their laughter mixed together, bouncing off the walls and making her warmer than even his amazing sleeping bag could.

 

* * *

 

Much later. The rain was coming down in sheets outside. He was snoring softly. Her mind was racing with the images he had inadvertently placed there, the images she had ever so subtly reshaped to suit her own needs.

_I’m his prisoner. I was a badass bounty hunter with a cool spaceship trying to capture him on his secret asteroid base, but he caught me in a trap, a leg snare, and now he’s made a slave girl out of me. It’s so humiliating, but I can’t escape. I have to submit to him. He’s stripped me naked, made me wear this degrading little outfit. A brass bra, a narrow brass belt fitted tightly around my hips, bracelets, earrings, sexy boots. They barely cover me. I’m so embarrassed to wear it. I used to be a fearsome bounty hunter. No one would mess with me. Every bad guy in the galaxy was afraid of me. But now I’m his dancing girl and his palace is filled with all the people who used to run in fear when they heard I was coming. All the people I used to hunt down and arrest. They were all terrified of me. Now I have to dance for those bastards, entertain them while wearing this little skimpy costume. It’s like being naked in front of all those evil fuckers. Only worse, somehow. There’s a purple strip of cloth, it hangs between my thighs, it sways when I dance. It only barely covers my pussy when I stand still. When I dance, it swings from side to side, everyone can see all of me, see the place I want so much to hide from them. My hair is long, twisted into a sexy braid, like Kristi’s. My body is perfumed, my face is painted, my fingernails are long and red, useless in a fight. I was a ferocious bounty hunter, now I’m an ornament. A pretty, sexy, useless little decoration. I look like an expensive whore. I’m wearing a brass collar around my neck. A long chain connects me to his throne, binds me to him. He pulls on it, bringing me close to him. He makes me kiss him in front of everyone. His beard scratches my face. They cheer him on, thrilled to see a badass like me reduced to this. I let him kiss me, let him fondle me, let him slap my naked ass. There’s no strip of purple cloth back there. Everyone can see it, they can see the red mark he made back there with his hand when I didn’t obey him fast enough a little while ago. It was only a tiny bit of defiance on my part, but he spanked me for it. He had to. He had to show me who was in charge. He had to show all of them that he had tamed me. I know that I have to please him or he’ll drop me in that pit, drop me down there with the pig men and the monsters and stuff. He knows that even an asskicker like me can’t fight in this outfit. No armor, no weapons, painted nails, big loopy earrings. I can’t fight like this. All my body hair has been shaved off. My legs, my underarms, my pussy. All smooth and hairless now. I shiver from the cold. This room is not warm. My skin glistens with the oil his slave girls rubbed into it earlier. I want to go back to them, feel their hands on my body again, feel their lips on mine, stealing kisses when the guards aren’t looking. I want to be back in my cell again, tended to by those beautiful girls, away from this dim, smoky throne room, away from these criminals I used to hunt for money, these leering fuckers I am now forced to entertain while they throw coins at me. They all want to fuck me. I can feel it in their stares, hear it in their words. They want to abuse me, degrade me, ravish me. I don’t want to think about it, but I can’t help it. I’m just a slave girl now. My fate is not my own anymore. The sexy, slow music begins to play. He tells me I have to dance for all his guests. I do. But I’m really dancing for him. His eyes never leave my body as I twist and writhe. The crowd falls silent. They have never seen anyone dance as sexy as I do. Neither has he. The music finally fades away. The dance ends. He begins to pull on the chain again, bringing me to him, step by step, inch by inch…I struggle, but only a little… He reaches out for me…_

She shuddered, fascinated with where her imagination was going with this. There didn’t seem to be any limit to it. What else would he make her do? With all those people looking at her? What else would she be forced to do while they watched? What else…?

She rolled over onto her side, facing away from him, waited patiently, making sure his snoring went on uninterrupted. She grinned in the darkness, knowing what she was capable of.

_I am a ninja…_

The sleeping bag completely muffled the sound of her zipper slowly sliding down.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of all the Joel / Ellie bonding moments in volume one of Flying To Wyoming, this one is my favorite. The concept art illustration that I mentioned back in the opening notes to chapter one directly inspired this chapter. Joel and Ellie, sitting around a campfire, laughing and enjoying life while he tells her all about Star Wars. To Ellie, even a crappy, closed-down drive-in can be a place of wonder and joy. And that lust for life begins to rub off on Joel, just a little bit. By the time they finally get to Jackson, they’ve had several nights like this one and he has begun to really care about Ellie as a friend. That, coupled with his growing attraction for her, is what will ultimately motivate him to try pawn her off on Tommy – to protect himself from her before she weakens his calloused exterior and also to protect her from his desire for her (he doesn’t realize that she wants him too – Joel can be a little dense when it comes to emotional stuff).
> 
> Ellie’s fantasy was fun to write. I tried to really dig into her subconscious (as I interpret her character anyway): her fear of failure, her hidden submissive side, her obvious need to be a badass, her desire for Joel, her love of science fiction, her bisexuality, her interpretation of Princess Leia’s slave girl outfit – as described by Joel, the “no hair” approach to grooming that she saw in her treasured issue of Playboy, the asteroid field of The Empire Strikes Back mingled with Jabba’s palace from Return of the Jedi, the key ring photo of Kristi Chau and her awesome hair, Tala Villanueva’s luggage full of perfume and cosmetics, Bill’s leg snare, and just a bit of an exhibitionist streak / unspoken desire to get caught being naughty percolating through the entire thing. Also, we know that in real life, Ellie is a terrible dancer. But in her dreams? Oooh la la. That girl has some moves. Because every girl loves to dance, right? Take your girls dancing, fellas, she’ll thank you for it. ;-)
> 
> My apologies to all the Jar Jar fans out there. Meesa sorry, but meesa just tryin to savin da Ellie from da bombad nightmares, okey-day? Dey’s scary stuff, dem prequels. Meesa hadda do it! For da Ellie!
> 
> And that does it for this installment. See you Saturday with a much darker, much sadder tale filled with blood, violence, fire, and rape: Chapter Seventeen: Tommy.


	17. Tommy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things happen and we move on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This one gets very dark. Very, very dark. It contains two rape victims and a graphic description of one of the rapes. Now you know what you’re in store for. The volume's tags have been updated accordingly.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 17 – Tommy**

 

There were fires everywhere. The dying streets of Memphis were crawling with panicked citizens, bloodthirsty crowds and retreating soldiers. Joel and his crew had come here looking to trade with local smugglers four days ago. The whole world had gone to hell almost eight years ago. All of it lost to confusion and fear, all except for little pockets like this one. But this place was going too. Was already gone, really. It had all gone to hell here just a week before they arrived, ranging out from their base in Marianna, Arkansas, looking to set up trade with the smugglers here. All this way, all those miles, just to find a zone all broken down and busted, dying. All this way for nothing.

For a brief moment, it had seemed like a really good place to scavenge, given the circumstances. Lots of supplies stored in buildings all over the city and not much in the way of established order to oppose them. Loads of goods, ripe for the taking, if you could do it. And he had a skilled, reliable crew who knew how to get things done under pressure. Yeah, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now this place was just another hellhole to be escaped by any one who could, and by any means you could find.

Two women ran shrieking down the dark street, weaving around trash, stumbling over the dead body of a soldier, their feet leaving bloody trails as they stepped over him, disturbing the thick, sticky crimson pool around him. Their passage was lit by the fires in the windows of the nearby buildings, the flames from the guttering ruin of the Humvee, the burning oil that spilled from several haphazardly scattered, overturned oil drums near the destroyed cargo truck in the middle of the intersection. Overhead, in the moonless sky, storm clouds were gathering. Thunder had rumbled for hours now, but no rain would fall.

This must be just like being down in Hell, Joel decided.

He hid behind a city dumpster, the overflowing trash foul and filthy around his untied combat boots. He watched the women go, wondering if someone was following them. Someone he would have to deal with.

He was in no shape for that sort of thing.

He rubbed at his neck, at the raw, red skin. A leather belt had been wrapped around his neck, had almost choked the life out of him. His own goddamn belt. He suppressed the urge to cough and waited, watching to see if anyone was in pursuit of the women.

His head ached. A particularly surly little bastard named Captain Cho had somehow gotten the drop on him as he tried to cut through an old, abandoned trucking company’s office building, on his way to reunite with Tommy and the crew. Gunfire and explosions had scattered them, the pursuing army units had separated them. No one made it out here on their own. Joel was hustling to catch up with his crew, hoping that at least a few of them had reached the designated rally point. His haste had made him careless. He never saw the ambush. The rifle butt had left a large, swollen spot behind his right ear. It would ache for days.

Cho’s M16 was in his hands. It was much too heavy now. Heavier than it had been just an hour before. There were only a few rounds left in the magazine and the underslung M203 grenade launcher was empty. His hands were shaking. He gritted his teeth and forced them to stop trembling, to steady themselves. He needed these hands now and they were no good to him like this. His wrists were raw, bleeding. Earlier, they had been tied tightly behind his back with his own damn bootlaces. Getting free from them had removed most of the top layer of skin.

Gotta find Tommy. Gotta find Big Matt. Craig. Lisa. Somebody. Anybody. Been up for too long. Been hurt too much. I’m gonna crash soon. Gotta find someplace safe first.

“Runnin’ on fumes,” he whispered to the rust and the trash, hissing through split, bloody lips. There were bits of cloth on his tongue from the filthy bandana that had been knotted together and used as a gag. He could taste the threads of it in his beard, in his mouth. He spat them out in a bloody glob. Most of it dribbled down his chin, dripped onto his chest. “Christ, I’d even be happy to see Phil right now.”

It hurt to speak. His throat ached. Tonight had been bad, real bad. It had almost been the end for him. He tried not to think about it.

Things happen and I move on, he reminded himself. So move on from it already.

No one was following the women. He was certain of it. Joel stood up on unsteady legs, drew a deep breath. His bare chest ached. Too many bruises and welts on his back. Too many splinters lodged too deeply in his skin. Each one was a little needle of agony. He sucked in cold, damp air through his teeth. The taste of blood was still thick in his mouth.

He remembered the feel of the pistol pressed to the back of his head. The hand on his throat, the hammer blows from the butt of the rifle against his ribs, his back, his legs, the dull thuds to his head from fists of the isolated army captain planning to set up his own little kingdom in the rapidly forming ruins of Memphis. Both separated from their teams. Alone with each other in the old office building. Natural enemies. Screaming, both of them. One of them asking questions he didn’t even want the answers to. The other trying to ignore the pain for as long as possible, not because he had any useful information to hide, but more out of a general hatred of the army. Both caught in a hell they wanted to escape from at any cost. Only one of them would leave that room alive, that was understood from the start. Joel had lost consciousness. Cho was stupid enough to bring him around later. Wake him up for an even more intense, more intensive session. The furious captain had said that he still had plans for him, still thought Joel was a citizen of Memphis, still thought the bearded Texan was part of the uprising that was destroying the officer’s beloved city. He hadn’t wanted Joel dying too soon. There were other things to do before the captain would’ve allowed himself the pleasure of slitting his prisoner’s traitorous throat. There had still been too much fun to be had before the end of the world.

Killed you, you son of a bitch. Took all night to get free of the knots, but I killed you.

Joel gripped the rifle more tightly in his aching hand. He raised it up, the muscles of his exhausted arm protesting every inch of the way, and grasped the underside of it with his other hand. The knuckles hurt. At least one of them was probably broken. The captain’s jaw hadn’t shattered easily. The blood and jelly from his ruptured eyes was still on Joel’s thumbs.

Wish I could have made it last longer. Made you suffer more, you son of a bitch.

Joel staggered out into the burning streets. Distant automatic gunfire echoed down the concrete canyon. His numb legs carried him down the dark sidewalk, weaving drunkenly, towards the place that was supposed to serve as a rally point in case something went wrong. It had. Very wrong. He hoped that most of the crew had made it to the empty insurance office at the edge of town, near the carefully concealed little hole in the containment wall made by a stray autocannon round in the early hours of the uprising, in the few parts of the quarantine zone that wasn’t on fire or exploding at the moment. He had to find them soon. He was going to pass out before long. His bare feet slid around inside his unlaced combat boots. His jeans were stained with blood, oil, rust, and other things. There was one 40mm grenade left for the grenade launcher mounted beneath Cho’s rifle, stuffed in his front pocket. He had forgotten all about it. His fingers were too stupid to load it anyway.

He made it about a block and half before anyone spotted him. A pair of protestors, young, a boy and a girl, probably teenagers. They were tossing Molotov cocktails at the brick walls of an old high school, a place that had been seized by FEDRA, judging from the sign on the fence that ringed the compound. They saw him, assumed he was one of them. They waved triumphantly at him. He played it safe, maintained his unexpected disguise by waving back in as friendly a fashion as his aching arms could manage. He was just one more fine citizen of Memphis, just like them, happy to be free of FEDRA at last – assuming that this uprising didn’t fail or succeed too well and end with the death of everyone inside the walls. Hopefully, he would be long gone before then.

Both of the teenagers were suddenly felled by a short burst of rifle fire from somewhere around the corner and up the street on the other side of the school. The lit Molotov one of them had been holding broke on the asphalt after it fell from dying fingers, setting both writhing, gurgling kids alight. Joel hustled into the shadows of the far end of the street and stayed close to the buildings as he crept down the street, until he found a dark alley he could slip into and disappear. He had felt the sniper’s sights on him the entire time, sure that a bullet was going to some screaming out of the darkness and smash into his brain at any second. But he must have been deeper in the shadows than he realized, as no shot came. Or maybe the sniper was out of ammunition, or maybe he finally had a little bit of good luck tonight. No matter. Once Joel slipped into the alley, he no longer cared. Like the dead captain, the unseen sniper and the burning bodies of the two teenagers were in his dust now.

He staggered along a side street, away from the burning high school, towards what he hoped was Kansas Street, the long avenue that ran by the little park to the south. That street was the easiest way to get to the industrial park with the little insurance office tucked away at the back, near the containment wall, the rally point for his crew.

Somewhere behind him, maybe a mile or so, to the west, in the direction of the containment wall and the shattered bridges that had once spanned the Mississippi River, he heard a wild, unhinged scream. Inhuman. A runner, not a crazy, but an honest to god runner. The infected were loose in the city now. Memphis was done for. No doubt about it now. He tried to quicken his stride but all that accomplished was to trip himself up, sending him tumbling to one knee.

He crouched there, in the middle of the street; his head hung low, pounding from hammer blows that only he could hear.

“Gotta… get… up…” His legs didn’t want to work. Too many blows from the butt of a rifle across the backs of his thighs earlier.

Another runner scream, also behind him, but more from the north this time. A shrill, terrified scream was intermingled with it. A man’s voice? A woman’s? He couldn’t be sure. Whoever it was, they were dying. Or worse. He forced himself up on legs made of wood, weaving slightly, swaying to a breeze he couldn’t feel.

Further down the street, some of the streetlights were flickering on again. Somewhere, desperate FEDRA techs were trying to restore the zone’s failing power grid. Probably trying to get the electrified fences around key buildings up and running. And not just to protect them from angry, bloodthirsty citizens now. It was a futile effort, given how things were falling apart inside the walls, but he would have done the same thing in their place. Sometimes a long shot is all you’ve got.

He was dozing as he walked, missing his turn onto Kansas street entirely. He tripped over the body of fat man in a nice navy blue business suit, sprawled half on the sidewalk, half off. Joel hadn’t even seen the man lying there, face up, his official FEDRA laminated badge clipped to his lapel, his forehead caved in by a rock or a brick. Joel levered himself up on trembling arms, the dead man soft and cold beneath him. He rolled off onto the concrete with great effort and lay there, face down, gasping for breath. He couldn’t remember a time when he had felt so weak, so utterly spent.

“Tommy…” he wheezed into the sidewalk, “where… the fuck… are you?”

He felt the round 40mm grenade in his front pocket, hard and painful against his balls as he lay with his hips across the sharp edge of the curb. He rolled over, fished it out, looked at it as if he had never seen such a thing before. He wondered why his rifle had picked this moment to wander off.

Ahead of him, where a few of the streetlights that had come on had stayed on, he heard screams, shouts, the sounds of a panicked crowd. He eased over onto one weary shoulder, looked, and saw dozens of people, some armed, most not, running, trying to make for a long, dense row of stacked shipping containers. A train yard, from the look of it, though it was much to dark in the open space beyond the containers to see any railroad tracks.

A Humvee was slowly following the crowd, a soldier manning the .30 caliber machine gun mounted in the turret ring on top. He fired precision bursts into the crowd, killing them two and three at a time. A few people fired back, wild shots that hit nothing but the night air. Someone threw a Molotov cocktail, but it sailed wide, lighting the blacktop to the side of the back tires.

A tall wire fence, now visible in the headlights of the truck, blocked access to the train yard and the safety of the containers. A few people dashed along the side of it, down the street, trying to get away from the murderous military vehicle, more tried to climb the fence in desperation, deciding that the barbed wire on top would be an easier threat to face than the belt-fed machine gun with the terrible spotlight sweeping across their ranks. The soldier in the turret picked them off gleefully as they climbed. Another solider hopped out of the passenger side door, unlimbering his M4 rifle, taking up a safe position to shoot from behind the armored door as the driver held the brake pedal down, let the engine idle. A mewling civilian lay twisted and tangled under the truck. They had driven over the wounded woman before stopping. The bullet in her shattered hip was a distant concern to her now that she had been crushed and ruptured by the heavy tires. She watched a pool of her own vital fluids forming around her and wondered what had happened to her kid sister, wondered if anyone would take care of the girl now. Her little sister was only seven and lost somewhere on these streets tonight.

Joel’s fumbling fingers found the rifle he had dropped. He knew this was none of his concern, this wasn’t his city, this wasn’t his fight. But he had special reason to hate the Memphis army tonight. He unlocked the barrel latch of the grenade launcher, worked it open, slid the grenade inside the breech, cocked it, and closed the compact auxiliary weapon with a sharp metallic ‘clack’.

The humvee was sixty, maybe sixty-five feet away. None of the soldiers saw him in the darkness of the unlit strip of blacktop, rising up, taking aim.

Joel had never been properly trained how to use the grenade launchers that you sometimes found mounted on these army rifles. Anthony knew. He was a former marine, after all. Big Matt also knew, having done a few years in the army as a kid. As the burly biker told the story, it was either that or go to jail as a seventeen-year-old, the judge had said. But Joel had never been in the military. He had built houses and dug swimming pools before all this shit happened, for Christ’s sake. He only knew how to eyeball one of these things using old-fashioned ‘Kentucky Windage’, adjusting the barrel slightly up horizontally to account for the drop of a projectile over distance, sort of like shooting an arrow from a bow. There was a fold-up ladder sight mounted along the top of the rifle’s handguard, just in front of the carrying handle, to assist a soldier in making accurate shots with the grenade launcher over long range. Joel had no idea how the damn thing worked. At this distance, he was reasonably sure he could just make a good guess and pull the trigger.

He did just that.

The grenade shot forth from the wide, stubby barrel with a pleasing ‘thoomp’, sailed through the darkness and struck the Humvee dead center in the middle of the rear wheel. He had been aiming for chest of the turret gunner, but grenades were one of the few things were ‘close enough’ counted just fine. The solider kneeling behind the door, reloading his rifle, just in front of the back tire, was instantly chopped into a bloody salad. The vehicle itself spun around, pivoting in place wildly, wobbling like a fiery top through the burning pool made by the Molotov cocktail, before finally tumbling over. The turret gunner survived, having been thrown clear, and lay on the asphalt screaming, both of his legs mangled. The crowd descended upon him and tore him apart.

More screams behind him and to his left. More infected from the sound of it. Drawn to the noise, no doubt. Joel saw a few sprinting shapes, jerking, twisting, parodies of the people they had been, lurching through the shadows of the street running parallel to his own, dashing out into the pools of light made by the overhead lamps, the burning vehicle, arms outstretched, mouths open wide. The crowd didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late.

Driven by fear, Joel found the strength to run, for a few minutes anyway. He hustled down the streets, staying out of the lights in the few places where they were on, moving between abandoned concrete barricades, around empty cars, towards the nice rows of houses near the big park. He jogged across the almost neatly trimmed lawns, between the homes on the far end of the street, saw a few petrified families peering out at him as he stumbled in and out of their lives in the span of a few terrified heartbeats. They must have been privileged people to have their own private homes like this, to not have been shoved into the overcrowded apartment buildings with all the other civvies packed together at the rotting heart of the quarantine zone. They must have been high-ranking FEDRA employees just a few days ago, when FEDRA still had authority here. They were no doubt dreading the inevitable moment when the angry crowds finally worked their way to this end of the city, and found them huddling inside all that luxurious space, everyone with a bedroom of their own, closets full of clothing, garages with cars that worked, cars that couldn’t get them beyond the heavy, locked gates of the city, sleek little family cars unsuited for the dangerous highways that ran between dead cities like black rivers of pitch and asphalt. They must have thought he was the vanguard of that movement, the first of many to come. A bruised, half-naked man in loose boots, bleeding and battered, carrying a rifle that no civilian would ever be allowed to possess inside a city like this.

One brave man stepped out onto his well-lit back porch, a fat, compact submachine gun in his hands. He fumbled with it, trying to figure out if the safety was on or if it needed to be cocked instead. It was a deadly, unfamiliar thing that he had always meant to spend a little time learning to use, but had always put it off for some reason, never finding the idea of training with it to be quite important enough of a thing to make the time in his busy schedule. A small boy’s voice came from inside the house, from the safety of the kitchen.

“Get him, dad!”

Joel drilled the man through the gut with a short burst from the rifle. Not many rounds left now. A woman shrieked from inside the house. The boy ran out to his fallen, screaming father’s side, picked up the gun, did his best to aim it at Joel with uncertain, numb hands. Joel shot him too. How many bullets were left in Captain Cho’s rifle now? Six? Seven? Less?

He climbed the fence, his boots slick with dew, scrabbling to find purchase on the smooth, painted wood. His abused, raw arms screamed at him to stop, the splinters in his belly pushed deeper into his flesh. He was over! He tumbled down into the bushes on the other side. His dull, stupid fingers picked up the nearly empty rifle. With a painful moan, he stood up, wobbled, moved forward. Keep moving or die. That’s just how it was most days. He saw that he was crossing Texas Street and laughed. It sounded crazy and heartbroken and homesick to his ears.

Ahead, coming from around an abandoned city bus, a woman was running with a baby in her arms, a little boy holding on to the hem of her coat. She saw Joel, judged from his beard that he was not a soldier, and hoped that he might help her. She began to move in his direction. Joel wanted to avoid her, but he didn’t want to run the risk of squaring off against more armed neighbors. Already lights were coming to life on front porches all along the street, families alarmed by the sounds of gunshots in this previously safe community, away from the rabble downtown, where that sort of thing was to be expected. Only a few steps closer, a soft glowing pool of streetlight on the pavement between them, and she finally got a good look at him. Her eyes widened in fear. She turned and ran, her little boy in tow, her baby bouncing on her hip, wailing with each hurried step.

“Infected!” she screamed. “ _Infected_!”

Christ, I must look worse than I thought.

He had washed his face as best he could after he had killed Captain Cho. He had to, couldn’t stand not to. But the rest of him was still covered in blood, mud, rust.

He had to get out of sight, off the streets, away from everyone. He half-slid down the short hill at the end of the dead end street to the railroad tracks below.

There had been tracks visible from the manager’s window of the insurance office. He had seen the long, paired rails running between the shopping center and the big park across the way. The tracks would get him to where he needed to go. He turned and hurried southwest, away from the center of the zone, towards the big containment wall that had been built all along the old expressway just six years ago, when this QZ was new.

More running. More of a shuffle at this point, to be honest. His raw feet were starting to chafe and blister inside his flapping boots.

“You’d better be there, Tommy,” he huffed, his lungs working hard. “You’d better not let me down, baby brother.”

I ain’t gonna make it without you, he admitted to himself. Not this time. Never gonna hear the end of it, I reckon. But that’s the plain truth of it. I’m just about done in.

A car squealed around a corner in the housing division to his left. It clipped a plastic trash bin that had been left on the edge of the street, waiting for a city sanitation truck that would never come. The car overcorrected, clipped another car as the driver tried to get back on the road. The driver stopped for just a moment, looked out his window at the damage he had caused, looked around, as though he were deciding if he should leave contact information for the owner of the other car. After a long moment of worry, the man thought better of it and tore off down the street, tires squealing.

That fucker right there ain’t gonna make it, Joel thought. Still living in the old world. Still living under the old rules. No way he lasts more than a week out there.

He realized that he was walking. He needed to pick up the pace. Needed to run. But his legs wouldn’t do it. He tried harder, challenging his distressed, hurting, almost broken body to work the way it had before Captain Cho had abused him so viciously, but there was nothing left. Another few miles of this, and he wasn’t sure he would even be able to walk anymore. His legs were giving out, one godawful step at a time.

Then I’ll fucking crawl. I’ll crawl all the way there if I have to.

To his right, across the grassy triangle where the railroad tracks and Florida Street met at a sharp angle, he heard a rapid exchange of gunfire break out. Joel crouched down, trying to hide in the tall grass that grew along the edge of the railbed. His feet were grateful for the rest, but his knees were going to be bitching about this for hours to come.

In the parking lot of a warehousing complex on the other side of the broad street, a large group of protestors were trading shots with a small squad of soldiers that the angry rioters had stumbled upon in the darkness. The mob greatly outnumbered the four-person fireteam, but the soldiers maintained their discipline in combat. Under the leadership of their sergeant, they moved smoothly from the concealment of parked cars to the superior cover of the carefully arranged cargo containers near the warehouse doors, obeying her barked orders precisely, firing on the move, covering each other as they advanced. In the face of such controlled, lethal gunfire, the surging throng of rioters began to falter, lose coherence. This wasn’t at all how they expected it to play out when they had rounded the corner and spotted the soldiers resting and trying to radio HQ. Once the big soldier with the belt-fed machine gun took up position behind the yellow forklift, the crowd broke and ran in terror, his hailstorm of bullets ripping through their ranks, killing or wounding twenty of them or more in just a few seconds.

The civvies routed, fleeing in every direction in a blind panic, the soldiers regrouped swiftly, coolly, ignoring the cries of the wounded civilians the mob had left behind in their disorganized stampede to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Joel watched the soldiers take stock if their situation. They were low on ammo. Two of the troopers had already switched to their pistols. One rifle lay abandoned on the blacktop. The machine gunner had only a dozen rounds or so of belted ammunition left, only enough for one or two very short bursts. Joel knew that the next time the soldiers encountered an angry crowd, they were sure to be overrun, dragged down, and torn apart. From the body language of the demoralized soldiers, he could see that they knew it too.

Fuck ‘em, he thought and moved south along the tracks, staying low, his bruised legs and lashed-marked back tormenting him with every step.

Another quarter mile or so of agonizing walking. Despite the cool night air and the dampness from the rain that wouldn’t fall, he was sweating heavily. His chest hair was soaked with perspiration. His beard stank of his own saliva and the food he had vomited up earlier. He briefly considered dropping the rifle. It was nearly empty anyway and it weighed almost more then he could carry anymore.

The little park was up ahead, on his right. He was almost there.

“Almost there… almost there,” he repeated to himself, saying it again and again, a crazy mantra. Whatever it took to keep his legs moving. “Almost there… almost there…”

At the crisscrossed intersection of streets ahead, a Bradley IFV came roaring down the blacktop, on fire inside and out. Screams were coming from within the armored hull. The driver was fighting for control, but the fire must have finally reached him. The light tank began to weave wildly, treads ripping shallow furrows into the blacktop, careening into several parked cars, demolishing them and hardly losing any speed in the exchange. It finally plowed into the side of the Oak Grove Missionary Baptist Church, smashing through the brick wall easily. Inside the damaged building, fresh screaming could be heard. Whatever sort of miracle the people huddled inside had been hoping for, they certainly hadn’t expected anything like that to happen. This was not the sign they were waiting for.

Joel smiled grimly and hoped the burning tank would explode, but it didn’t. That sort of thing only happened in the movies. Most of the time, anyway.

He turned sharply, stepped off the railroad tracks, stepped onto Kansas Street, and made his way southeast, towards the barrier wall down on 3rd Street, a few blocks away. He was almost to the rally point. More intersections, more dark streets, more furtive figures glimpsed in the shadows. No one was seeking a confrontation this close to the outside wall. Everyone who could was getting out, and if they could get out without trouble, all the better. No one here was looking for a fight, not this close to the dangerous salvation of the world outside the walls.

Shots ahead made a liar of him. A quick exchange of gunfire in the parking lot of another warehouse complex.

He bent low again, walking in a slow, excruciating crouch. He was in the industrial park area now. Fences everywhere. No easy side streets to take. He would have to pass this place. Other scavengers, trying to pick the nearby warehouses clean were everywhere, each contained within the fences of the commercial compounds they were raiding. The best way through was the most direct path. He moved forward slowly, ears listening for anything that might be a threat to him.

Silence.

He crept up on the parking lot where the gunfire had come from. The front gate was open, smashed by a truck from the look of it. He saw a single soldier, young, scared, kneeling over a dead body, trying to raise his unit on handheld radio.

“This is Private Yates. I’m at the corner of Kansas and Industrial. I have one dead straggler. I am requesting pick up or backup. _Again_. I repeat, I’m requesting pick up or backup. I have become separated from my unit. Is _anyone_ receiving me?”

The boy had his back to him, talking into his radio, kneeling next to the woman he had just killed in a gunfight minutes before. Joel could see a futuristic looking submachine pistol lying next to the dead straggler’s small hand. He was certain he recognized the gun. He scowled. The soldier continued to bark into his radio, received only static in return. He had no rifle, only empty ammo pouches for one. His service pistol, a standard issue black Beretta, lay on the ground next to him.

Joel crept across the parking lot, easing his way under the twisted, buckled chain-link gate, moving as close to the young soldier as he could.

This is stupid, he told himself. You’re taking a dumb fucking risk for a dead woman who chose Tommy over you. This is fucking stupid.

“Hands up!” he heard himself croak. He was committed to this godawful dumb plan now.

The startled soldier dropped his radio, raised his gloved hands slowly.

“Just get out of here,” the kid said, not daring to look back. His voice was strange, filtered by the regulation issue gasmask he was wearing. “There’s backup on the way. A whole fire team. They’ll be here any second. Just take off, okay? Get going and nobody has to die.”

Joel knew the kid was lying, but for a long moment, he considered letting him go. He was so fucking tired. How many people had he killed today? He had lost count. This boy couldn’t be more than sixteen. Most likely drafted into the service very recently. He probably wouldn’t survive the mess on these streets long enough to link up with another group of soldiers anyway. Then Joel remembered Cho, remembered what had happened in the cold, damp office of the trucking company, many blocks north of here.

He killed the boy with the last burst from the rifle.

“Nobody’s comin’,” Joel wheezed, dropping the empty M16 to the ground with a rattling clatter. “We’re all dead tonight.”

He nudged the dead kid over on his side, off the legs of the woman the boy had killed. He knelt down, groaning all the way, both from pain and grief. He pushed the dirty brown hair out of the woman’s face.

Alexa Levesque. She had been in Texas on business for her company when the outbreak hit. She had been traveling north with Joel and his crew since the day they’d left Austin more than seven years ago, hoping one day to finally make her way home to Quebec. She and Joel had been lovers for a time, but Joel could never give her the emotional connection she so badly needed. She had switched her affections to his brother Tommy instead, enough like Joel in most ways, and more emotionally available for her. But Joel was a jealous bastard and he’d eventually driven them apart by the sheer force of his unrelenting glower. A few months ago, while the whole crew was all holed up for a long winter rest in a Best Western in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, she had approached him on the roof, just as Phil had relieved him from sentry duty. She wrapped her arms around him, kissed him, warm and small and frisky against him on a cold December morning, told him that she wanted peace with him again. He had let her lead him downstairs, to the third floor, to the room she had picked out for herself. Inside, Tommy was waiting on the bed, as surprised to see Joel as his older brother was to see him. She said she wanted there to be peace between them, that the anger simmering between the brothers was going to tear the crew apart unless they found a way to be friends again. She wanted them to share her that night. She made it sound like it was some magnanimous gesture on her part, rather than the fulfillment of a secret fantasy she had been carrying around for the last few years. Tommy wasn’t thrilled about the notion, but he was down for it. Tommy was down for every damn thing. Joel had needed some convincing. She had anticipated that. There were a few bottles of good wine submerged in a bucket of cold, slushy water. She had a knack for finding stuff like that, the finer things, luxuries that became scarcer with each passing season. She had a knack for getting her way too. She had been a corporate negotiator after all. Alexa had stitched billion dollar deals together between rival companies back when the people of the world still gave a damn about something as silly as money. With that kind of experience bending people to her will, her carefully planned, artfully arranged mission of bringing peace between the feuding brothers in the spacious room of the Best Western overlooking Highway 56 was forgone conclusion.

“Damn, Alexa,” he said, smiling sadly, stroking her cheek. It was still warm. She had only been dead for just a few minutes. If only he’d gotten here a little sooner. “With that sexy French accent of yours, you could talk me into doin’ just about anything, couldn’t you, darlin’?”

He closed her formerly lovely, now glassy, brown eyes.

“Gonna miss your cookin’, girl.” He rested his hand on her shoulder, zipped up her red fleece vest. She had always hated being cold. He couldn’t bear the thought of her lying on the cool ground like this. His shoulders shook. His voice was raw, cracking. “None of us can cook worth a damn. What are we gonna do without you, Lexie?”

He chuckled hoarsely; a wild inappropriate thought pushed its way into his mind. She would only let Tommy do her in the ass. Joel remembered being a bit put out by that. He understood her reasons for it now. Bigger wasn’t always better in some cases. He shuddered and pushed the vile memory of the dead army captain out of his mind.

“I’m sorry I was such a son of a bitch to you sometimes, darlin’.” His voice was weak, shaking. He closed his eyes, tried to remember her as she had been, full of life, fun, frisky, always talking in that crazy sexy French-Canadian accent. He let himself enjoy the memories for a few moments, knowing that soon enough he would have to put her out of his mind and do his best to never think of her again.

He turned his head, his mouth suddenly full of vomit. He puked onto the dead body of the soldier. He hadn’t meant to, but the boy’s body just happened to be in the way. The vomit was sickly sweet. A little canned pie filling, banana cream, digested down to a thin, runny gruel. He hacked and heaved it up. There wasn’t much of it, but it had to come out. The much nastier, much more disgusting remains of what had been a delicious lunch from what seemed like half a lifetime ago would be coming up next. Talented cook that she was, Alexa had made that for lunch today, just before the crew had decided to hit the seemingly abandoned ration distribution point, the one located in the old Kroger supermarket, in the old Southgate Shopping Center, near the old, boarded-up police station, not too far from where they had snuck in through the small hole that had been blasted into the containment wall by a stray shot from an army tank the night before during the worst of the riots on this end. They’d watched the hole appear from outside, lying prone in the grass, trying to find some way into the city. It has seemed like an invitation from above, that little hole. Enzo had offered up a small prayer of thankfulness, he knew the finger of God when he saw it.

The mostly abandoned supply fortress made from the old Kroger had seemed like a bit of providence too. It was an easy target, given the chaos at the other end of the city. A few padlocks to cut, a door to smash down with a stolen car, and a few hapless guards to kill. Easy. They couldn’t fill their sacks and trash bags fast enough. There was so much to choose from. They got greedy, got picky, slowed down the pace. That’s when the army had found them, a dozen or so soldiers suddenly arriving in force to secure the place, probably called in by some concerned citizen watching from a window across the street, watching the precious rations being pilfered by strangers, trembling fingers dialing the public phone in the downstairs lobby of the apartment, the only working phone allowed in the building under martial law, hoping not to be seen by the outsiders, fearing starvation this winter, watching their city dying around them. The army was not expecting to find such a well-armed, combat-experienced crew of scavengers inside the city walls so soon. The walls were still standing, still intact, still uncompromised as far as the army knew. The little hole above the little-used side street not far behind the insurance office had gone completely unnoticed in the skirmish that had created it. It was now covered with a big piece of corrugated metal taken from the roof of a portable shed, held in place down with broken masonry and other trash. If you didn’t know just where to look, you’d probably never find it. It was their only way out and they needed to get back to it soon, before this part of the city began to come apart too. But the Memphis QZ army had men arriving outside before they could slip out with their treasure. Some of the crew were already in position, keeping a watchful eye. The others knew what to do when they heard Phil give the sharp whistle of warning.

The overconfident soldiers had expected the small group of intruders to be an easy kill, but they were wrong.

The platoon lost both of their black light-duty trucks to hand grenades that Joel and Tommy had been hanging on to since Oklahoma City. Another squad, trying to flank around them on foot had been cut in half by Anthony, who had been waiting for just that moment, waiting in just the place he had said they would try to enter, waiting in the shadows with his machine gun. Craig, Nicki, Alexa, and the rest had kept the stymied soldiers pinned down with a steady peppering of small arms fire. Up on the roof, Phil methodically killed the soldiers, one at a time, with his scoped bolt-action rifle. The army here hadn’t fought any real resistance since the containment wall had been completed six years before. They weren’t prepared for Joel and his crew, weren’t prepared to go up against so many guns wielded by people, fifteen in all, who knew how to use them.

For a half hour or so, it looked as though they might actually force the tattered remains of the hapless army platoon to retreat. Especially after Big Matt had destroyed the Bradley armored vehicle that had arrived early in the fight, confident that it was about to put this rabble down. Among the huddled clusters of soldiers, cheering wildly in joy in those few moments before the light tank had exploded so spectacularly, not one of them could have ever imagined that the big, husky straggler in the leather vest had a disposable anti-tank rocket slung across his back and had been dying to use it for almost four years, right after the Dallas QZ had fallen, on that baking hot, muggy July day when he had taken it off the dead man with the nice cowboy hat in the fires of a quarantine zone so new it still smelled like fresh paint. No, the soldiers didn’t cheer after that.

But the rations stacked high inside that old supermarket were too damn valuable to give up, no matter the cost. Eventually more soldiers arrived, pulled from riot control duty all over the city. Up until that point, Memphis was still under FEDRA control. The rioters were everywhere, but the military had been slowly, surely driving them back, forcing them off the streets. Memphis could have been saved, no doubt about it. But once the platoons and squads had been ordered to give up much needed manpower, ordered to divert vitally needed soldiers to the battle at the Kroger, the rioters had regained the momentum, began to burn the city. The military lost ground, the few helicopters that could still fly beat their way into the air, carrying the highest-ranking FEDRA personnel to St. Louis or Kansas City, provided the fuel would hold out. The army was left behind with no clear withdrawal plan and a broken chain of command. They fought more desperately as a result. Even a crew as skilled as Joel’s was no match for half the fucking Memphis army on their doorstep – or so it seemed by the end. Even behind the ration station’s concrete barricades, facing down soldiers who had almost no cover in an open parking lot, there were just too damn many guns pointed at that old supermarket. Enzo and Cody had been blown apart, killed by explosive rounds fired from another Bradley IFV. Larry’s head had been ripped open by tight burst from an automatic rifle, right in front of Freddy, who had been handing him a fresh magazine for his pistol at that moment. Joel and Tommy were separated, driven apart by a godawful barrage of small arms fire. Joel screamed for everybody to run for it. Sometimes, that’s all you could do. Joel and Mikey had found each other in the smoke, tried to loop around, tried to work their way southwest, to the rally point on 3rd Street, but Mikey had been turned into a shower of exploding meat by a big .50 caliber machinegun spitting death from the top of a pursuing Humvee.

The damn thing dogged Joel for several blocks, punching big, fist-sized holes in every wall and every car that he sought to take cover behind. He fired his scoped M14 dry at the damn thing, his sawed-off shotgun too. It was futile; the thing was too well armored. He’d wounded the turret gunner through the gaps in the armored shield around him, but the bastard had just traded places with another soldier waiting safely inside the air-conditioned vehicle. It drove him before it, pushing him north and west, away from the parts of the city he had seen on his way in, forcing him onto unfamiliar streets, herding him towards the center of town, towards the riots, towards more soldiers. He destroyed the Humvee with his last hand grenade, dropped from above into the crew compartment from a fire escape he had managed to shamble up when he was in the gunner’s blind spot, hiding on the other side of a big, empty U-Haul panel truck, driven all the way up from Georgia, if the faded art on the side of the truck had been any indication of its origin.

Free of the thing at last, he tried to lose himself in the chaos swirling all around him, tried to look for a landmark of some kind so he could figure out which way was south. The fucking army was everywhere, understrength and all the more brutal because of it. His entire damn crew had been scattered, a few of them might be moving in pairs, most of them were probably alone, like him, each trapped in their own personal hell as Memphis burned to the ground around them. Who knew if any of them had made it, if any of them were still alive. Alexa almost had, but her luck had ran out less than a mile from the safe house, just a minute or two before Joel had found her.

The duck stew came out in a hideous, spewing jet, mingled with bits of carrots, potatoes, wild onions. He sprayed the foul geyser all over the body of the dead soldier. The tears came too. He couldn’t hold them back, couldn’t hold anything back anymore.

His guts began to churn. He knew it was all coming out now. With fumbling, frantic fingers, he dug a roll of toilet paper from her shoulder bag, found a dark corner just inside the warehouse’s big roll up door, near the open loading dock where he would still be able to watch the front gate and the street beyond. He had to get it all out of him. All of it.

Down the street, past all the rows of parked cars, another small skirmish broke out between a roaming mob and a pair of fleeing soldiers. The soldiers went down fighting, killing as many of the civvies as they could. A mile north of them, another group of civvies was contending with a small pack of runners. They went down fighting too. The infected went looking for more food, more ways to spread their infection. They moved south, towards the victorious mob, the cheering people who wouldn’t see them coming until it was too late. Memphis was a lost cause.

Fowler’s TransNational Insurance had never been a particularly successful endeavor. It didn’t matter. The owner had sold just enough coverage plans to independent truckers to keep the bills paid and the lights on. That had been enough to keep the IRS from sniffing around. Beyond that, it had served as a nice front to move cocaine and heroin around the country, squirreled away inside the engine compartments of various big rigs.

Big Matt had found several baggies of the stuff hidden in a ceiling panel. Lisa had commandeered a small amount of both for her big first aid kit. The rest could be divvied up among the members of the crew however they liked, as far as she was concerned.

Anthony Makosky knelt outside the office, partially concealed behind an old ‘Memphis Flyer’ alternative newspaper vending machine at the edge of the sidewalk, listening to the party going on inside. Good times were not Anthony’s thing. Whatever kicks Big Matt or Freddy got out of drinking and drugging the night away, Anthony got his own kind of rush from being on sentry duty. No amount of heroin or booze could ever give him the same rush as pulling the trigger on somebody and watching their lights go out. Three years in the U.S. Marine Corps before he was cut loose early for carefully hidden reasons, two years of that time spent in overseas conflicts. That’s where he had first developed a taste for it. When the outbreak hit, he had been living in Arizona, surprised to find himself recalled to duty, ordered to report to Yuma to be reactivated and assigned to the future site of the Albuquerque QZ. For reasons of his own, he had decided not to go to Yuma, chose to go his own way instead. This new world offered interesting opportunities. He didn’t want anything to do with the old world anymore. That’s all these quarantine zones were: frightened people huddling behind concrete and steel, all pretending that civilization was still a thing to be concerned about, as though if they all told themselves the same lies often enough, then that would make it true. Civilization was gone. It wasn’t coming back. Good riddance.

A tall, bedraggled figure peered around the far end of the street, from the edge of the red brick building ahead of him, one of two that comprised the borders of the dead end alley the insurance office was located in. Anthony raised the compact M249 light machine gun to his shoulder. He felt that familiar tingle that came with punching another poor sucker out of this world. He sighted it in patiently. A clean kill was the best kill.

The figure didn’t see him but knew he was there, gave the proper hand signal. Anthony stood up slowly, gave the ‘all clear’ signal with his off hand, watched his boss step out from around the broken sign of the corner coffee shop, out into the street, Alexa’s fancy Calico M950 submachine pistol in his hand. He nodded to the big Texan, understanding that she wasn’t coming back.

“Hey, Joel.” Anthony wasn’t much for words.

“Hey, Anthony,” Joel croaked, shuffling slowly towards the safe house. He was in bad shape. That much was clear. Looked like he had gone ten rounds with baseball bat.

Anthony eased the door open behind him. He leaned in, addressed the other members of the crew.

“Joel’s back.”

Tommy was out the door in a flash, limping from the wound in his thigh. Shrapnel. Lisa had dug it out, patched him up, told him to stay off it for a while. He rushed to Joel as fast as he could, straining stitches with each clumsy step.

Joel opened his arms. Tommy wrapped his big brother up in a hug. Anthony smiled. Family was important. Not that he had ever had any. But still, that’s what people said.

“What the hell happened to your leg, Tommy?” Joel’s voice was harsh, raspy. He stank of puke. He let Tommy out of the hug.

“Nothin’ that won’t heal,” Tommy laughed, relieved to see his only surviving family member returned from the grave. Joel had been missing since well before sundown. “Where the fuck have you been, man?”

“Wanted to see Graceland,” Joel said, limping back to the office, each brother doing his best to support the other as they hobbled along.

Anthony smiled at their passing. Family was important. That’s what _everyone_ said. He tried hard to believe it, wanting to, wishing he’d had some of his own at some point in his life. Secondhand was good enough at a time like this.

“We passed Graceland on the way to the QZ, Joel. It got bombed into rubble right along with the rest of that part of the old city,” Tommy joked, limping and groaning.

“Explains why I couldn’t find it then, huh?” Joel wheezed, ready to drop.

Big Matt was standing in the doorway, holding the door open for them, mostly blocking the way inside due to his bulk, though he didn’t mean to do so. He was just too damn big sometimes. His huge left bicep was wrapped up with a bandage. There was a new tear in his leather vest, held together by a safety pin. His ‘1%’ patch was stained with blood that hadn’t been there the last time Joel had seen it. Across his back, his fading rocker patch reading ‘Rebel Angels’ was torn loose at one corner. He would ask Nicki to sew it up later, give her the Hershey bar that was hidden in his pack in trade. His big, meaty hands weren’t too good at needlework. Weren’t too good at anything really, that wasn’t violent in some way.

“What’s goin’ on, Chief?” he asked Joel, spitting a big plug of chewing tobacco across the sidewalk, away from the members of the crew. His bottom lip was bulging, distended by a wad of the nasty stuff tucked inside his mouth.

“Thinkin’ I shoulda got a map before I went lookin’ for Graceland, Big Matt. This is a damn easy city to get turned around in, you know?” Joel chuckled, too tired to think up a new joke, leaning on Tommy pretty heavily now. Lisa was already coming to the door to check on him.

Big Matt laughed, a deep echoing sound. “Damn streets all look the same after the Air Force repaved ‘em, right?”

Big Matt wasn’t the first Matt in the crew. He had joined up six years ago, in Houston, the last surviving member of his biker gang – the last one still wearing his colors, anyway. The original Matt had been with them for a year and a half before the newer, larger Matt came along. Tall, burly, bearded, with an impressively hard gut, Big Matt had seemed the only appropriate moniker for the new guy. Ironically, ‘Original Matt’ had died just a few weeks later, cut down by a military patrol while sneaking around on the streets of the QZ after curfew, as the crew was getting ready to leave the outskirts of Houston. But by then, the nickname had already stuck. Big Matt didn’t mind at all.

Matt continued to rumble with laughter. He held his Uzi high, letting Lisa slip past him to tend to Joel as he limped through the door.

“Joel!” she said, her skilled hands already inspecting his bruised jaw, his swollen eye, his busted lips. “Thank God! We were starting to think you weren’t coming back. We’re still waiting on Mikey and Alexa!”

“No point. He’s gone. Alexa too,” Joel croaked, handing the dead woman’s fancy submachine pistol to Craig, Nicki’s boyfriend. Everyone knew what it meant. Alexa loved that strange gun with its long, horizontal, tubular magazine. It looked like something out of science fiction movie and held a hundred rounds. She would have never parted with it willingly.

Tommy blanched as Craig placed the gun on the small table by the old plastic potted plants. He wanted to ask Joel if he was sure about Alexa, but knew better. Joel wouldn’t say it if he wasn’t sure.

He wanted to scan the room for familiar faces, but his vision was blurry. Joel’s voice was almost gone. “Who else did we lose?”

“Kishan,” said Nicki, her eyes still on Alexa’s gun. There weren’t many women in this crew, and the loss of her French-Canadian friend hit her particularly hard. “Got cut down crossing the street on the other side of the park, trying to make his way back here with me and Craig. Fucking army.”

“Fuck,” Joel croaked bitterly. Kishan had been a terrible shot, but he had an uncanny knack for memorizing maps and stuff. He kept the crew’s entire inventory list in his head as a backup in case the notebook was ever lost. It would be harder to do business with other smugglers without him running the numbers while Alexa handled the negotiations.

Big Matt spoke up from his spot in the doorway. “Yeah. And just as I learned to say his stupid name. Rangarajan. Rangarajan! Shit, what was the point of all that practicing now?”

From his place on the sofa in the office reception area, Freddy erupted in laughter. “I know right?” Freddy asked. The tall teenager was a dick, but a funny one most of the time. “Two months I’ve been with you guys now and I _still_ can’t say it.”

“ _Rangarajan_ , goddammit!” Big Matt said, half for amusement, half for the annoyance of all the wasted effort. He spit another glob of tobacco out into the night, making sure it landed well clear of Anthony’s preferred hiding spot behind the newspaper vending machine.

Phil sat on the other couch by the back wall, next to the manager’s office and the back way out, next to the big metal barrel they had dragged in earlier for light and warmth. He smiled thinly, nodded to Joel, tossed another old phone book into the flames, keeping the fire going.

“Good to have you back, boss.” Cold, flat. A monotone. Phil was a weirdo. A card shark from Vegas with strange, unreadable eyes behind his thick glasses. He was also Lisa’s cousin, which pretty much guaranteed him a place in the crew. She was a paramedic and trained medical personnel were rare outside the walls of a quarantine zone. FEDRA had conscripted as many of them as they could find as the world began to fall apart.

Joel began to say something to Phil, trying to be pleasant, even though he wasn’t overly fond of the odd man. His eyes were unexpectedly arrested by the unknown woman huddled on the couch next to Freddy. Disheveled, half dressed, she was clearly afraid for her life. She wanted nothing to do with the arm draped over her but didn’t dare earn Freddy’s displeasure by pushing it away. Her eyes said that she had been crying.

“Who’s your friend, Freddy?” Joel asked, his eyes narrowing. Freddy was drunk, high, he didn’t notice the sudden shift in Joel’s creaking voice.

“Forgot her name,” Freddy said. “Found her when I was searching a Hardee’s. Got all the packets of ketchup we’ll ever need, by the way. Mustard too, if you like that shit. _You’re welcome_ , everybody.”

Big Matt chuckled.

“And you brought her back here? To the safe house?” There was an edge in Joel’s strained throat that was more than just a dry, vomit-scorched ache.

“She ain’t gonna tell anyone about us, Joel. She don’t know how we got through the wall. Fuck, she don’t nothing, dude,” Freddy leered. “Except how I _like it_ , you know?”

Behind him, Joel heard Big Matt chuckle deeply again. Anthony too, maybe. Hard to tell. Matt’s rumbling, booming voice tended to drown out everyone else’s and Anthony had a tendency of laughing only when the person next to him laughed.

Hope I can count on the rest, Joel thought to himself. This shit is about to get ugly and I’m not in any kind of shape for it. But some shit you got deal with when it comes. No putting it off.

“You’re supposed to leave that stuff where you find it, Freddy. That’s _the rule_.”

“I know, Chief,” Freddy said with a dismissive shrug, using Big Matt’s preferred title for Joel. “But she looked so lonely. Figured she could use a friend.”

He reached down, squeezed one of the girl’s ample breasts. She shivered in revulsion, but tried to plaster a weak smile across her face. She was survivor, this one.

Joel realized that her hands, resting in her lap, were tied with a shoelace. The sight of it made him shiver.

“Fuck, I know _I_ needed a friend, right?” Freddy snickered.

Matt laughed again. Lisa and Nicki glowered. They knew this sort of thing happened, but rarely in their presence. The door to the manager’s office behind Phil wasn’t very thick. They’d heard every awful sound while Freddy was back there, getting acquainted with his new ‘friend’ earlier in the evening.

“Can I talk to you a minute, Freddy?” Joel said, gesturing for the older teenager to join him across the room by the door.

Freddy rolled his eyes, sighed petulantly, stood up, leaving his scuffed varsity jacket draped across the back the couch. He had been a running back. They’d almost made it all the way to state his senior year. He’d graduated, barely, with a few summer classes, just a few months before the outbreak. He was drunk and a little high, as he often liked to be after a firefight or a good fuck. He didn’t notice Joel’s battered hands balling into fists. Tommy did. His own hands did the same. He was ready to support his older brother.

“Look, Joel,” Freddy began, his hands wide in a mostly insincere apology, “I’m sorry. I fucked up. It –“

He went down, losing a tooth along the way. Joel winced. If his knuckle wasn’t broken before, it was now.

“What the _fuck_ , you son of a bitch?!” Freddy was young; he recovered quickly, already getting back on his feet with ease. He spit blood defiantly on the old carpet. “Sucker punching a member of the crew? Ain’t that shit against one of your precious fucking rules too?”

Behind him, Big Matt and Anthony fanned out. They were the crew’s primary enforcers. Matt because he wasn’t much good for anything else, Anthony because he didn’t mind violence. Tommy swiveled around to face them down. He was wounded, they weren’t. Their guns were out, his wasn’t. He had no illusions about how badly this was going to go for him.

“New rule, Freddy,” Joel hissed, flexing his burning knuckles. He pointed at the girl with his good hand. She flinched. She knew that being in the spotlight could not go well for her. “This shit? This stops today. No more. Not at a safe house, not anywhere. I’d better _never_ hear about you doing anything like this again. You hear me, boy?”

“Do you hear this, Big Matt?” Freddy said, cocky, sure he could take Joel in his current weakened condition. The older man was practically dead on his feet, stooped, swaying. Everyone could see that. “You gonna stand for that, buddy? Cause I’m sure not. What about you, Tony?”

“Come on guys,” said Craig, moving smoothly around to flank Freddy. Joel had hoped he could count on him. Craig was a good guy, big-hearted, just like Tommy. Not as accurate of as shot as he used to be since he’d lost his glasses in that river, but at this range his eyes were more than good enough. He was trying very hard to play into the ‘nice Asian nerdy guy’ stereotype that he knew Freddy so often pigeonholed him into. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“Fuck it doesn’t,” grinned Freddy, spitting out a little more blood, sure he had most of the muscle in this crew on his side now. Craig was good in a fight, but both Tommy and Joel were wounded. Maybe Phil would take their side, but so what? He was no good in a fistfight anyway. Sniper work was all he contributed to the crew. That and mixing drinks on those rare occasions when they found a stocked hotel bar or something. Odd mix of skills for a professional card player, but Freddy didn’t care to think about it too much. He never thought about anything very much. He should have been the quarterback, he knew that for a fact, and they wouldn’t have lost that crucial game that cost him the championship. He knew he should be the head of this crew too. These old guys were too cautious about every fucking little thing. Those who dare, win. Or whatever that slogan painted on the locker room walls had read. That shit was a _fucking fact_.

“You’re gone, Freddy. Get your shit and leave,” Joel said, his voice was an icy whisper.

“No, I don’t think so,” Freddy grinned, throwing a knowing glance at Big Matt. “In fact, you old fuck, I think we’re about to get some new leadership. Whaddya say, Matt?”

This was it, the moment he had been planning for since he joined the crew in Pine Bluff, when he helped them break into a warehouse at the end of winter, using keys he stole from his dead neighbor. The butterfly knife was hidden in the palm of his hand. Joel was just three feet away. He turned to give Joel his left side, to hide the knife that was about to appear in his right hand. He was certain that he could pull off a coup. Absolutely sure of it.

The gunshot was deafening in the confines of the small room. Only Phil didn’t flinch. He never flinched.

Freddy fell to the ground, legs buckling, arms limp, dropping straight down like a bag of laundry, a golf ball-sized hole punched through him, front to back. The knife thudded softly on the old carpet. Most of his heart was sprayed across the wall behind him, next to the door of the manager’s office where he had raped the woman. She screamed. A little bit of meat had landed on the sofa cushion next to Phil. He looked at it curiously and flicked it away. He was the only member of the crew who wasn’t standing.

Smoke poured from the barrel of Lisa’s oversized, scoped revolver. Nicki’s gun was also in her hand, near her hip, like Lisa’s. But she hadn’t fired it. From where she stood, the poor woman on the sofa would have been hit if Freddy’s body hadn’t stopped her much smaller bullet. Craig’s gun was also in his hand, halfway out of his holster. Things had moved faster than he had anticipated.

Anthony was probably manageable. But Freddy and Matt had been party buddies. There was still a ways to go before this matter was settled.

Joel turned around slowly, on his last legs, about to drop.

“New rule,” Joel repeated, breathing hard, trying to keep the world in focus. He had words he needed to say and his throat was only barely up to the task.

Joel said he knew he was many things, most of them bad, but a rapist had never been one of them. He told them that he had tolerated it to a certain degree, to maintain cohesion in the group and keep the more rowdy members from getting too wound up and aggressive during downtime. But that shit was going to stop tonight. He had to lay down the law. No more raping. Not from anyone in this crew. Not any more. Not. Any. More.

He went around the room, asking if everyone understood. Tommy would never do such a thing, of course. Joel knew that. Phil wasn’t into women, wasn’t into men either. Wasn’t into fucking at all, as far as Joel could tell after six years on the road with him. When Phil said it sounded like a fine rule, no one was surprised. Craig said that everyone knew Nicki would kill him in his sleep if he ever tried such a thing with her or any woman. That brought a few much-needed laughs. Anthony was never too much into that kind of stuff to begin with really, sex was something he could mostly take or leave, and he accepted the rule with a nod. That left Big Matt. Joel stopped speaking. He was out of words and his burning throat was in open rebellion against him now.

The large biker weighed his options, studied Joel through dangerous, slitted eyes. Matt wasn’t bright. He was possessed of an animal cunning though. He knew he would make a terrible leader. Bad decisions had cost him his previous group when attrition in the ranks of the San Antonio chapter of the Rebel Angels left him in charge. He knew very well how badly that had turned out for his old crew. But he was one of the more enthusiastic admirers of the female form. The notion of giving up a lot of future sex wasn’t sitting all that easy on his massive shoulders.

I’m barely standing, Joel thought. If he pushes back on this, there’s no way I can fight him. He’ll kill me before Tommy or anybody can do anything. And he won’t break a sweat doing it. It’ll take a dozen bullets to bring down that man.

Across the room, Lisa and Nicki subtly shifted the lowered weapons in their hands. No one but Anthony saw them do this, and he said nothing. He was happy to let this play out however it would. Quiet and polite guy that he was, he had an almost insatiable love of sudden violence. No one in the crew knew that about him yet. That time was coming.

Big Matt turned his head and spit his chewing tobacco at the open door. It struck the doorframe and slid down the surface in a large, gooey blob. He wiped the spittle from his lips with the back of one giant, gloved hand. A little of it dripped off his bearded chin.

Joel shuddered inside, for reasons no one in the room could guess.

“Sure thing, Joel,” Matt nodded slowly, coming to a sort of peace with this new rule. “It was just something I did to blow off steam anyway. Not like it’s something I gotta have. Besides, plenty of places to buy it or barter it these days. Cheap. I’ll make do, Chief.”

“No problem, boss,” said Anthony, with a bored shrug. He was certain that Joel already knew how he felt. The nod had said it all, but only Joel had seen it. The words were for the other people in the group. A happy family was important. He was trying hard to understand that. He would pretend in the meantime.

Had he been smiling when I turned around? Joel asked himself. A crazy, wild-eyed smile, his eyes on Freddy’s dead body. For less than a second. Not even half a second, maybe. Not even sure if I saw it. Never seen anything like it on Anthony’s face before. Was it really there?

Anthony and Big Matt shared a resigned, comradely look, shrugged, and picked up the corpse. They carried it out and dumped Freddy’s body in the pawnshop across the way from the corner coffee shop, depositing the remains carelessly through the broken window. Joel cut the woman wrists loose with Freddy’s butterfly knife, gave her both the blade and Freddy’s varsity jacket as a parting gift. It was getting cold and dangerous outside.

It’s not much, but it’s something at least, he thought, feeling a terrible, awful kinship with her.

She looked at him as though he were laying some sort of cruel trap for her. Her eyes were wide, darting around, unsure how her circumstances could have shifted so suddenly.

“What’s your name?” Tommy asked, standing tall at Joel’s right arm. His voice and eyes were very kind.

“Sara,” she said, very softly, almost too quietly to hear. “Sara Hamilton.”

Joel winced, looked away. His hand drifted to his watch, battered but still keeping good time. After everything that had happened, this was more than he could bear. He clamped down on his tongue, tasting the blood and vomit in his mouth, driving back any possible tears before they could form.

Godfuckingdamnit. On top of everything else that’s happened to me tonight. This too?

Tommy led her to the door, careful not to touch her. She was skittish for good reasons. It might be months or years before she let another man touch her again. She would never be really be the same woman she had been before.

“Go on, Sara. Get out of here,” Tommy said, his voice hoarse for reasons that no one in the room but his brother could know. Joel tried to block the words out. “I’m so sorry. None of this should have ever happened to you. Be careful, okay? Find someplace safe and stay there until all this mess blows over. Alright?”

Everyone in the room knew it was probably a death sentence, sending her out onto those streets tonight. But with Memphis in collapse, she was probably going to die soon no matter what.

She looked at Tommy, saw how he was standing there so protectively, almost as though he were shielding her from the others in the room with his body. She decided he wouldn’t let anyone shoot her in the back, nodded mutely and ran out the door. She disappeared into the darkness at the end of the street, rounding the corner of the coffee shop on bare feet. None of them ever saw her again.

Nicki and Lisa traded glances, sharing a silent, unspoken relief. Big Matt was a good guy in many ways, and someone you absolutely wanted next to you in a fight, but this part of him had been very hard to ignore. He had always considered them off limits, since they were part of the crew. That same qualifier had extended to Alexa as well, when she had still been drawing breath. But regardless of that safety buffer, none of the women had been happy about the habits of a few men in the crew. But these were the sorts of moral compromises everyone had to make in the wreckage of this new world. Nevertheless, the women had all felt that they shared a part of the blame for what happened to some of the other, outsider women their crew had run across on their travels. Ignoring what was going in down the hall or in the nearby tent could only take you so far down the river of denial before a sad, quiet sort of despair began to set in. They would both sleep better with Joel’s new rule in place. They wished it had been set in stone from the very start.

Big Matt and Anthony returned to the office, having made plenty of room for the fleeing woman as she passed them. The smaller of the two men took up his watchful position by the door, returning to the sentry duty he found so soothing. It was never a chore for that one.

Joel nodded at them and Matt sat down by Phil, who was reading an old issue of Time magazine he had found under the sofa. Matt pulled the big machete from the sheath strapped across his back and began to sharpen it. The confrontation was over. Big Matt was a real tough bastard, but he was a man of his word. This was the new rule and he would live by it. He had no problem following the rules, so long as they were simple and applied to everyone. Craig and Nicki cuddled up on the deep ledge of the windowsill together. She ran her fingers through his thinning dark hair. He pulled her close, his arm around her waist, and whispered things into her ear. She giggled. Joel thought it was a stupid thing to do, sitting with your back to a window like that, even if the blinds were heavy and drawn tight. But he didn’t say anything. He’d said too damn much for one night as it was. He stood there, his aching thumbs hooked in the waistband of his pants, missing his belt, and happy to have so much of the crew back together. He’d snuck under the Memphis containment wall with fifteen people behind him, counting himself. He did a quick head count.

Lost seven. Kept eight. Five more outside the walls, hiding with the vehicles: Vic, Jerry, Miguel, and the twins. All still alive out there, probably. Came here with twenty, leaving with eleven. Worst beating we’ve ever taken, he thought with a bitter shake of his head. But they were still together. Still a hell of a hard-hitting crew. Still on the move, not in the ground or in a cell. Still kicking ass and getting by on our own terms.

Gotta focus on what you’ve got. Let the rest of it go. Only way to get through this world.

He swayed slightly. He expected to collapse at any moment but just didn’t give a shit anymore. The crew would look after him for the next day or two, if that’s what was needed. He let out a long, labored breath. He was going to pass out soon and he knew it.

At least the room was full of loot, bags and bags of it. Laundry bags, duffel bags, gym bags, trash bags. All full of the swag he and his team had collected earlier, before it all went to hell at the Krogers. With half their people gone, it would take more than one trip to get it all out of the city tomorrow, and back to the Miguel and the waiting vehicles.

Joel nodded in satisfaction, the room swimming slightly at the edge of his vision. You took what you could get in this world. Bad as it was, it could have gone a lot worse for his team… and for him too. He had gotten away. It was enough. He wanted to vomit and faint, in that order.

Lisa came over to Joel with her large canvas medical bag on her shoulder. He allowed her to ease him down on the empty old couch where the frightened woman had been earlier.

“What the hell _happened_ to you, Joel?” she asked, her voice full of worry. “You’re beat all to hell.”

“Tell me about it,” Joel grumped. Craig brought him a mostly-full bottle of whiskey to numb the pain as Lisa began to carefully pull the splinters out of his belly and chest. He noticed that Freddy had left his nickel-plated .45 automatic and his big, stainless steel shotgun lying on the carpet next to the couch.

Thanks, Freddy, he thought to himself. Knew you had to be good for something you greasy faced son of a bitch.

“What the hell is all this shit, boss? Did you fuck a tree or something?” Craig asked, holding up one of the discarded splinters that Lisa was placing on the little table, one at a time, next to Alexa’s gun, trying to keep them out of the carpet. He was studying it, trying to make light of the curious injuries.

Matt and Anthony both chuckled, each from their opposite ends of the room. Joel glowered at Craig’s choice of words.

“Had to bust through a door,” Joel lied. “Rain had gotten to it a long time ago, I suppose. It was all cracked and rough. Damn thing was just one giant splinter, I guess.”

“Did you just run straight into it or something?” Phil asked in his flat voice, leaning forward in curiosity, looking at a particularly large and wicked splinter held in his long, dark brown fingers, peering over the top of his thick lenses at it, wondering how Joel could have managed to pick up so many splinters like this one from just a single door.

“I _said_ I knocked it down, Phil. Now shut the fuck about it.” Joel took another long pull from the bottle and gritted his teeth. Lisa was digging a particularly deep sliver of wood out of the skin just above his navel.

Phil was silent. He shrugged, sat back and prepared for another long evening of mostly being ignored by everyone, as usual. Big Matt chuckled, rose to his feet, sheathed his sharpened machete, and took up a watchful place by the front door, his Uzi ready to rock. Anthony made plenty of space for him, his compact, short-barreled, belt-fed machine gun supported by a heavy nylon sling on his shoulder. The box of ammo attached to it was completely full. Two more boxes were heavy at the bottom of his big, hiker’s backpack. Another one was somewhere in one of the old leather saddlebags by the couch, the ones Big Matt often carried slung over his shoulder. Memphis had been a great place to find ammo for his trusty weapon.

“With all that shit going on out there,” Big Matt rumbled, lightly punching the man with the big gun in the shoulder, “an extra set of eyes couldn’t hurt.”

“Thanks,” Anthony said, smiling, feeling more inclined than usual to be friendly tonight.

Seated in the rolling office chair across from the couch, Tommy tried to read his brother’s face in the flickering light, but Joel would not make eye contact. He wouldn’t look Tommy in the face again until Memphis was miles and weeks behind them. Neither of them would ever speak of this night. They never agreed to this mutual silence, it just happened in the way things like that often do between siblings.

From his perch on the windowsill across from them, Craig sent a roll of duct tape spinning across the linoleum floor to Joel.

“For your boots, boss.” His voice was apologetic. He didn’t know what he had done to earn such an angry look from their leader, but he didn’t want to be on Joel’s bad side.

Joel nodded. He bent down to pick it up, but his head swam. He probably had a concussion, he realized. Lisa patiently pushed him back upright. She couldn’t work if he wouldn’t remain still. She was the paramedic. This was her job. _He had to sit still_. She communicated that to him without a word, only a stern glare and a single pointed finger, that’s all that was needed. He nodded. He never told her how to do her job. He would slip into unconsciousness soon anyway. The tape could wait. His boots could wait.

He closed his eyes, tried to focus on the warm body of the woman kneeling between his legs, tried to think about how pretty Lisa was with her dark eyes, her small hands, her long legs, her tightly braided hair, her pretty mocha skin. Lisa had made it known more than once and always very subtly that she was available to him. But he had never acted on it, not after the drama with Alexa had almost split the group in half. He wanted to think about finally taking her up on her clear, though mostly unspoken offers, wanted to feel her naked and inviting in his arms later, wanted to feel that old, familiar lust he’d carried for her for the last few months. Wanted to want it, at any rate. But he couldn’t. There was no joy for him in those sorts of thoughts tonight, no matter how much he wanted the distraction of the familiar fantasy, no matter how desperately he needed to remind himself of what sort of a man that he was. Or had been, maybe. He didn’t want to think about what had happened, what it had cost him, how it had changed him. He wanted to be his old self again. Safe inside this place with his crew on watch, he found he had time to think, found that he didn’t want to think about any of it. He was beginning to fear that the old him was dead, had died this very night in that old trucking company office across town. He shuddered and Lisa dabbed at his stomach affectionately with a little cotton ball, blotting the blood that was seeping out from an uncountable number of pinpricks.

“Hang in there, Joel,” she said sweetly, barely resisting the impulse to plant a kiss on his skin. “Be done soon. Promise.”

She wanted him. She thought she was hiding it well, but everyone in the crew could tell. Tommy thought that maybe he should start nudging Joel in her direction. But with the death of Alexa, maybe it might be better to wait for a while. But not for too long, probably. There were no guarantees in this world anymore. He wanted Joel to be happy.

He didn’t know it, but it would be years before his older brother could do anything like that again with a woman, and Lisa would be long dead by then.

“Where the hell did your shoelaces go, Joel?”

He thought it was Nicki’s voice, but he couldn’t be sure. Everyone was so far away. A giant roaring, thudding engine of some sort was running inside his head, drowning everyone out.

“Who the fuck knows.” His speech was thick and slurred.

“Probably used ‘em to tie some broken scissors to a two-by-four or something,” Craig joked, rubbing Nicki’s shapely thigh affectionately. She was a bit of a big girl, and he loved her curves and her long, strawberry blonde hair. He was glad for the new rule too. “Your brother loves to tie broken scissors to every damn thing, Tommy.”

“All part of his charm,” he heard Tommy say, laughing at Craig’s joke.

There was laughter coming from all around the room, even from Phil, who rarely spoke, rarely laughed. There had been laughter in the office, laughter from the army captain. A thousand disjointed things flashed across Joel’s mind. He visibly flinched from the onslaught going on inside his head, a swirling storm of sensations that only he could perceive. He groaned. Lisa assumed it was from the splinter she was removing from underneath his nipple. He didn’t even notice the bit of wood.

“Shut the fuck up, Phil,” he heard himself say harshly, not aware that it wasn’t Phil who had spoken. Everyone thought it was a joke. Everyone laughed, especially Phil.

Joel placed a hand to his forehead, tried to rub away a headache. He gritted his teeth. He wanted them to be quiet. He wanted them gone. He wanted them dead. He took a long pull from the bottle of Wild Turkey. There was fresh blood, stale spit, and dried vomit in his mouth. He desperately needed to wash the taste of it away.

The taste of the dirty, thickly knotted bandana in his mouth, wedged between his teeth, forcing his jaw apart until it ached; the pressure of the cold barrel of the pistol touching the back of his head; the feel of the old, ruined, splintered coffee table beneath his naked torso, pressing against him uncomfortably, pricking him with sharp little points, from his collarbones all the way down to his belly button; the damp carpet under his bare knees, wet from the big water bottle taken from the old office cooler, the one the captain had poured over him to wake him up, clean him off, introduce him to this new reality; his old leather belt looped around his neck, across his shoulder and down to the leg of the coffee table, holding him down firmly, choking him; his arms behind his back, bound painfully at his crossed wrists by one of his own bootlaces; numb, purple hands, fingers flexing uselessly; thighs spread very wide, thick layers of duct tape securing each one to a different table leg, tape taken from his own back pack; a big, hot, nasty glob of spittle landing with a wet plop in the crack of his ass, running down his sensitive skin in rivulets, mingling with the gooey, disgusting foam of saliva and phlegm already collecting there – the captain had promised he wasn’t going to go in dry – he wasn’t a monster, he had said; the other bootlace wrapped tightly, agonizingly around his scrotum, just above his balls, pulling them together tightly, stretching them painfully away from his body, like a rodeo bull about to be ridden; the detestable feel of a hand on his vulnerable, unprotected dick, stroking him, sadistically needing to make him hard before the rape begins; more slick blobs of fresh spittle splattering against his ass, trickling down; more stroking; struggling; nowhere to go, no escape; a wet, warm tongue licking him where no one ever has before, tasting him, adding more saliva, slipping inside, exploring that place where the captain will soon enter him with something more substantial than his soft tongue; the feel of his own body betraying him, hardening in the captain’s hand; the man’s other hand gripping his suffering, tightly bound balls with powerful fingers; mocking words of love whispered against his quivering flesh; delicate kisses on his backside, making a joke of him, pretending, telling him that he knows how much Joel secretly wants this to happen; a tender, vile parody of love; the moment is almost at hand; the sound of a zipper sliding down is deafening to his panicked ears; his muscles strain against the bonds, against the tape, against the belt, the table rocks wildly, his eyes fill with exploding stars, blotting out the room around him as the leather loop chokes him; a wild animal’s need to get free before it was too late; the sound of the pistol’s hammer being cocked, the feel of the gun barrel at the base of his skull; terrified yielding submission; quivering silent paralysis; suffocating fear; pain; pressure; violation; entry; vanquished; subjugated; voiceless, heartbroken, unhinged, useless weeping; something has been stolen from him, he can never get it back; humiliation; bitter abasement; strong hands holding his hips as he is roughly taken; a dull, brutal, vicious tempo; searing hot tears on his cheeks; warm saliva seeping out from around the soaked gag in his mouth, mixing with the tears, dribbling from his chin; splinters from the old wreck of a table beneath him being driven into his flesh with each quickening thrust; cruel laughter; uncontrollable wailing beneath the gag, the sounds of his pain and shame and more, muzzled by the knotted cloth; an aching, swollen, yearning prostate he has never been aware of before; mingled cries of ecstasy; a sudden rush of cold air into an empty void; a hot splash across his back; shuddering sobs; laughter; a hand stroking him skillfully, seeking to finish him off against his will; the table drives splinters into the underside of his chin as he grinds his jaw against it, furiously, savagely, hysterically trying to deny his captor this last, pitiful crumb of victory over him, over his traitorous body; futility; a violent spasm; a burning; horrible, sickening release; Nauseated by what he is doing, he needs to vomit; the revolting gag is soaked through with his own stale, cold spit; he retches, the lunch that Alexa had cooked for the crew that day comes rushing up; duck stew with carrots and potatoes; he’ll never eat duck again, not for as long as he lives; he knows he has to swallow the disgusting, half-digested, soupy chunks or choke to death; it burns his sinuses, dribbles out his nose; deep, racking tremors of confusion and mortification pulse through him as he continues to empty himself, both into the vile gag and into the captain’s hateful, stroking fist, the man’s other hand cupped beneath, filling with gushing spurts of incendiary humbling subservience; he gulps down the expelled contents of his stomach that fill his stretched-wide mouth, trying not to drown in it, some of the runnier bits slip around the edges of his gag, filling the cloth with the stink of it; he struggles with the last few wretched bits of duck meat still in his mouth while fingers begin gently stroking his head, his cheek, playing with his hair, his beard, leaving an abundance of hot, sticky fluid behind that he doesn’t want to think about; soft, soothing words praising him, teasing him, mocking him, tormenting him; the feel of his wadded up Dallas Cowboys t-shirt, his favorite shirt, soft on his trembling back, being used to wipe him clean of the cooling, congealing mess the captain unloaded on him; his own thick, ropey wetness, painted across his face as decoration, untended to, dries on his skin, pulling the flesh taut; long moments of unimaginable shame kneeling there, bent over at the waist, laying across the coffee table, exposed, forgotten, hurting, sniffling softly as the captain tries in vain to contact his men on the radio; and then nothing; left alone in the room as Cho departs, takes the light with him; trussed up and naked for a long while, nothing to do in the darkness but think, grieve, weep; furious about the tears, about the weakness, about what had been done to him, about how had he responded to it, going mad from it, but unable to stop crying, unable to do anything, terrified to escape, terrified at what will happen if he doesn’t; he remains there, his balls bound and aching, the mess on his face cooling, drying, hardening; tasting the mess that has soaked into the gag; his cock hangs there, tingling and sore, he hates it, hates what it did; he weeps, he cannot say for how long; the darkness is chased away by an approaching light; the sound of footsteps returning, squishing in the wet carpet behind him; he freezes in fear, unable to make a sound; it begins again; it takes even longer the second time; he prays this will be the last time; he doesn’t want this again, didn’t want it the first time, wants it to stop, wants it to be the last rape of the body he no longer feels he owns, even it that means his death; it is not; it will take the captain a long time to reach completion this second time; an even longer, unthinkable amount of time for the captain to finish for a third time later that night, after Cho had eaten and rested a bit; before the last despoilment of Joel before bedtime, before the hour grows too late. He even feeds Joel a few sweet, heaping spoonfuls of canned banana cream pie filling; Captain Cho keeps the pistol at Joel’s temple as he makes his prisoner lick the spoon clean; the officer winks, thinks about placing something else in Joel’s mouth instead; unzips himself, pulls it out, teases him with it, presses it, hard and throbbing, against Joel’s cheek, slippery from all the tears; but the army captain isn’t a fool, he doesn’t want to risk castration; he senses that Joel is not entirely broken yet; but he promises that the time for this particular treat will come; Joel fears he is right; he just wants to die, but knows the darkness won’t take him; not so long as Cho has a use for him; not so long as Cho blames him for the ruin of Memphis, the loss of his platoon, the uprising, the flames; Cho plans to wait out the riots for a few days; see if he can gather some of his scattered men, plans to keep Joel around a while for entertainment, not just for himself but also for any more loyal soldiers he can find; Cho kisses his sweaty forehead and promises him that this is a very, very good plan and that this is exactly what he deserves for rising up against his betters, against FEDRA, against the army, against Cho; He assures Joel that he absolutely deserves every single disgusting thing that is going to happen to him over the next few days; Cho tells him he’s going to love it, because that’s just how whores are – they love to be abused. Isn’t that right? Joel weeps as Cho begins to smear his suffering, defiled ass with the pie filling, easing fingerfuls of the cool, slippery stuff inside him. No mere spit for lube this final time around tonight. This is a celebration. His thrusts are hard, fast, deep. The sweet goopy filling is much better for sodomy than saliva. Joel is slick and wet, Cho doesn’t have to hold back this time. It goes on forever before Cho finally adds his own contribution to the frothy mix packed inside his bucking, groaning prisoner. The knots would eventually loosen from all the straining, from all the sweat, from all the blood. The captain would fall asleep carelessly, tired and spent, wake up too late, die screaming in agony, blinded, gutted, his jaw shattered, his teeth reduced to cracked and jagged stumps in his gums, his knees and elbows broken, bent too far in the wrong direction, his fingers raggedly amputated by the same claw hammer that had destroyed his teeth, his genitals stomped into pulp, the ruined masculinity ripped away from his body by insanely strong hands driven mad with rage. But not before sundown. Not until much later. Not until well after nightfall. Joel would have to wait, suffer, endure until his moment came. Whatever it took to keep on living for one more day. Things happen and you move on.

“Must’ve strangled some poor sonuvabitch with ‘em, I guess,” Joel said, forcing a harsh laugh, blinking it all away, hopefully for good, trying to see the ceiling clearly, trying hard to hide how shaken up he was, knowing full well those bloody, knotted up laces were laying on a wet carpet halfway across this burning town, right where he had left them in the office of the abandoned trucking company.

The tremble in his voice was faint, only Lisa and Tommy picked up on it. It drew a look of concern from her. He looked away, staring into the heart of the fire burning in the old barrel next to Phil. He couldn’t face her. He couldn’t face anyone. He wished Phil would get the fuck up and go sit somewhere else, somewhere that wasn’t in the edge of his vision. He wanted to be left alone with the flames.

“Been a long damn night,” Joel husked, trying to sound friendly and relaxed. “Can’t rightly remember who all I killed tonight. Or how neither, I guess. You know how it goes.”

Craig laughed, as did Matt. Anthony didn’t. Neither did Nicki. Something was up but the two of them couldn’t put their finger on it. Anthony wrote it off to Joel being exhausted and probably beaten by some army guys. Shit like that happened some times. Nicki was less certain. Some people had clearly worked him over. No doubt Joel had killed them and got away. Not the first time something like that had happened to someone in the crew. Lisa and Tommy looked at one another. They knew. Or suspected they did. Something had happened to Joel. Something more than a beating. Something worse than torture. They didn’t notice Phil looking discretely at Joel in a sidelong fashion, focusing on no one spot in particular, but seeing Joel nonetheless from the corner of his vision, his eyes half hidden behind the Time magazine he was pretending to read. His expression was unreadable. Whatever he was thinking, he kept it to himself. That’s just how Phil was. Even Lisa didn’t really understand her strange cousin all that well.

“You know, Joel,” Tommy began good-naturedly, rolling his way over to his brother, stopping the big, comfy office chair next to the arm of the couch, on the side away from the burning can, carefully staying out of Joel’s line of sight, trying to lighten the mood, trying to keep anyone from asking any more questions of his brother, “I think maybe you might look even worse than you did that evening in Chula Vista.”

“Chula Vista?” asked Big Matt from the door. “I been there a few times. Helluva town.”

“Me too,” said Lisa, pausing briefly in her work. Joel still had a lot of splinters in him. “I was going to medical school at UC San Diego for a while. Fun place.”

“So what the hell happened in Chula Vista?” Nicki asked. She and Craig leaned forward together, his arm around her shoulders lovingly. Phil’s eyebrow went up, it was what passed for an expression of genuine curiosity from him. Even Anthony took an interest, turning his head slightly in the direction of Tommy, though he kept his eyes fixed on the barely open door and the dark, dangerous streets beyond.

“Chula Vista?” said Tommy proudly, happy to be the center of attention, happy to be the distraction his brother obviously needed for some unspoken, unknown reason, happy enough to take the risk and rest one comforting hand lightly on his big brother’s faintly shuddering shoulder, feeling Joel pat the hand gently, briefly, gratefully, almost affectionately. “Well, gang, that is one _heck_ of a story. Lemme tell you guys all about it that shit. And let me say right up front: back then, me and Joel, we were both a lot younger, a lot crazier, a lot hornier, and a _whole lot dumber_. So you already know that it’s gonna be about a girl…”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah. So there’s that, I guess. How much has Joel had to endure in this life? How many bad memories has he buried so he can keep going? A lot.
> 
> Continuity Nerd Alert: Craig and Nicki were first mentioned in chapter two, Big Matt in chapter six (along with Original Matt, who’s dead by the time they reach the Memphis QZ), Freddy in chapter twelve, Lisa in chapter thirteen, and Phil in chapter sixteen. I have short bios for all twenty seven members of Joel’s old crew and a timeline that chronicles their adventures from Austin, Texas all the way to Boston, Massachusetts, from February, 2014 to December, 2023. Is this kind of obsessive attention to detail incredibly sad? Or impressively sad? I can’t tell anymore!
> 
> Drop by again on Wednesday for the much shorter and much sexier Chapter Eighteen: Chula Vista. Stories will be told, Ellie will dance, Joel will be bare-ass naked from the chapter’s first word to the last. Don’t miss it!


	18. Chula Vista

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel takes a bath and tells Ellie a story about him and Tommy in better days. She tries very hard not to peek while he’s soaping up and reminiscing.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 18 – Chula Vista**

 

“So what happened next?” asked Ellie, swiping her damp, loose hair from her face for the umpteenth time since she had stepped out into the sun, freshly scrubbed from the bathing area they had put together in the ladies room. The warm, playful wind would not stop dancing with her hair today.

_Look, hair, I just washed you! Don’t make me put you up in a ponytail all wet and stuff. You’ll dry and get stinky and nobody wants that!_

Joel’s voice came from inside one of the drive-in’s bathrooms, around the building on the other side from the concession stand, where she stood by the open door, holding the big scoped hunting rifle. There were no windows in the bathroom and so they’d propped the door open to let some daylight inside. A nice breeze blew into the room, making this morning’s bath time particularly invigorating for each of them. His voice echoed around the room and bounced its way out to her ears.

“I hit the ground. Whaddya think happened?”

“Seriously? From one hit? I thought you were tougher than that,” she said, teasing him.

She liked teasing him, liked hearing the mild irritation in his voice, liked knowing that he was making a solid effort to put up with her, to talk to her in a friendly way. It had to be good for him, being sociable and nice like this. She was sure of it. As his self-appointed partner, she had decided that it was her job to improve him. He had rough edges that needed sanding off and she was going to do just that. He’d thank her for it later, she was certain of it.

His voice drifted out from the cinderblock room again, echoing slightly. She could hear his hands splashing around in the big plastic bins full of rainwater that they had collected during the night.

“Ever had a pool cue broken over the back of your head, squirt?”

The water was mostly clean. She’d already taken her hobo bath with it and it wasn’t nearly as nasty as the bathwater she’d left him in the Motel 6 a week ago. After their trip through the rusty, muddy shit hole that was Pittsburgh and the flooded, scummy subway tunnels of Boston, she shuddered to think of how nasty the water had been in that little plastic ice bucket.

_Gotta be better than what I left him last time. I was hardly dirty at all today, compared to that gross, muddy sludge that came off me in the motel. Yuck._

She was so happy that he always let her go first. The idea of bathing with anything less than fresh water was gross to her. Although, for some reason she couldn’t explain, the thought of him washing himself off with the same mostly-clean water that had already been on her naked body made exciting little thrills run up her legs.

_It’s a little dirty, sure. But it’s also kinda dirty. I should be ashamed, I guess. But I’m not. _

_Not much._

”Nope. Can’t say that I have,” she said.

She had played pool before though. Quite often, really, in the dayroom of the dormitory, once she was tall enough to make the shots on tiptoe. Riley had been the one to teach her the rules, of course. After a few months, the two of them could run that old, battered and stained pool table against just about any of the other students. Riley sucked at cards, but damn, that girl could play pool. However, after a moment’s consideration, Ellie decided it was best to leave that information out of her answer. He was on a roll and this was his story. And she wasn’t ready to tell him about Riley yet.

“Get back to me when you do, short stuff. In the meantime, hush up and let me tell my story.” His voice carried out to her as she stood watch a few feet outside the bathroom door, her lovely eyes very determinedly focused on the two-lane road at the top of the hill and not at all on the wide open door only a few feet away.

She tried very hard to think about something other than him bathing in there. Naked. Soaping up. Washing himself. All of himself. Every part of himself. And then rinsing off. The water running down his naked body, the same mostly clean water that had been on her own naked body just a little while before. It was almost like sharing a bath, she realized. She suddenly wanted to do that. To bathe with him. See him naked. Let him see her naked. Wash him, let him wash her, feel his hands on her naked body. Place her hands on his naked body. On him. On Joel. On Naked Joel.

_So naked._

“Please continue,” she laughed, happy to be thinking of him like that, happy to be clean, happy to be interacting with her friend and mentor like this. They would be leaving the drive-in tomorrow, probably. But today was laundry day, as she now insisted on calling it. A nice bath in buckets of fresh rainwater, clean clothes drying in the sun. A nice, lazy day with nothing to do. Just spend time together, taking stock of supplies, mending clothes, sharpening her knife, watching him clean their guns. Just the two of them, together on this beautiful day with big white puffy clouds drifting in a blue sky above them. And now Joel was totally bare-assed naked, just a few feet away from her, telling her a cool story about himself and being super fucking butt-naked while doing it. She was sure life didn't get any better than this.

_God, he is so absolutely fucking incredibly naked right now. I wanna be naked too. Naked with him._

“Anyway, so I’m on the ground,” he was saying. “The girl I was hittin’ on is screamin’ her head off. Her ex-boyfriend is standin’ over me, wavin’ the broken pool stick, shoutin’ something in Spanish. Probably sayin’ somethin’ about my mother or some shit.”

“You don’t speak Spanish? Didn’t that get spoken, like, all the time in Texas?” She knew all about Texas. She’d seen that movie with that cowboy, the one who rode into town on a horse. He wore that hat. There was a saloon or something. It had been a while since she’d seen it. She made a mental note to ask him if he’d ever seen that movie… whatever it was called, the one with the cowboy.

“Sure. I know some Spanish,” he hedged. “A little anyway. But he was using all sorts of cuss words I’d never heard before. Well, I guess I knew a few of ‘em.”

“Oh yeah? Can you teach me some of them later?” she asked, inching just a little bit closer to the open door, the rough concrete feeling coarse and scratchy under the soles of her bare feet. She knew she was breaking ‘the rule’ but she didn’t care. She smiled wickedly.

The rule was one she had established that morning, and it was very simple: the sentry must stand at least three feet away from the open door while bathing was going on inside, _at all times_. No exceptions. She had explained the rule to Joel very carefully before she went inside and got undressed. He had looked at her like she was talking nonsense, as though he were slightly offended that she would even think he was the kind of man who would do such a thing. But she was the one who had been about to get naked, so she wasn’t taking any chances.

But things were different. She wasn’t the one who was naked now. That was the most important thing that had changed, the absolutely crucial part. Besides, she had been the one to make the rule, so she could bend it a little. But only if she absolutely had to, of course. And with naked Joel on the loose in there, she felt that she had no choice but to start bending the fuck out of the rules. It was her call to make, so she made it. She was tough and decisive like that.

“Tengo hambre,” he said with a chuckle, his words accented in a way she had never heard from him before. Is that what Spanish sounded like? “That’ll be useful to you if you ever find your way down south of the border.”

“Cool. Does that mean ‘go fuck yourself’ or something?”

“Nah. It’s how you say ‘I’m hungry’ in Spanish.”

“Sweet! That’s super useful! I say that all the time! I’m always hungry! Ten-go ham-bray!” She knew she was mispronouncing it. She didn’t care. She smiled and considered herself an honorary Texan now.

_I need a cowboy hat._

She giggled, tugged at the shoulder strap of her tank top, adjusted the elastic waistband of her shorts. Her clothes seemed looser today. She hoped she wasn’t losing weight. She was sick of vegetables and beans. She wanted meat on the menu again. She wanted to be healthier, curvier. For him. She tugged the neckline of her shirt down just a little bit.

_My boobs do look pretty good in this top today. It’s just breezy enough, my skin’s just damp enough. Nice and clingy shirt. No sports bra squishing them down. This view’s not too bad, considering what I’ve got to work with._

She looked down the top of her shirt, tugged it away from her slightly, wiggled her shoulders back and forth rapidly, checking to see if she had a pleasing jiggle ready if the sudden need for one arrived. She decided that what she had available would be up to the task in a pinch.

_I wonder if he noticed my boobs in this shirt as I walked out of the bathroom? God, I hope he did. This little tank top is the best shirt I’ve got for getting his attention._

“Don’t I know it,” he was saying, a hint of laugher in his deep, echoing voice. “Now you can gripe about starving to death in two languages, kiddo.”

She burst into laugher, a wonderful ringing, musical sound. Inside the small bathroom, it brought a smile to his face.

“ _Anyway_ ,” he continued, letting the word hang there for a few seconds, trying to pick up the thread of the story. “… Where the hell was I again?”

Her voice came to him from the open door. “About to get a butt kicking. ‘El Butt-o kick-o’, as they say in Spanish.”

She snickered as she said it. Were his ears playing tricks on him, or did she sound a little louder, a little closer than she did a minute ago?

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said, soaping up his armpits, making sure to keep a wary eye on the door now. Just in case.

Ellie’s not the sort to peek, is she? Nah, she’s a good kid, he decided. She won’t do that. Probably... Hopefully…

“So I’m on the ground, seein’ stars, about to get my ass kicked on a sunny Thursday afternoon in some shitty bar down in Chula Vista…”

“That’s in California, you said?”

“Yeah. Southern California,” he said, rinsing off the cool, sudsy water with a thick Motel 6 washcloth. It was a nice change of pace from the threadbare rags a person usually had to make do with out on the trail.

“Like… Los Angeles? Close to it?” Her voice was full of curiosity and not just about the story. She was definitely getting closer, the sneaky little shit.

“More southern than LA. It’s part of San Diego, down closer to Mexico.”

“Ever go surfing while you were there?”

He barked a short laugh, caught off guard by the question. She was a real out-of-left-field thinker, this girl. “No, never been much of a surfer, kid. You’re still followin’ the three foot rule, yeah?”

A long, awkward silence. The very faint sound of little naked feet slapping their way quickly across sun-warmed concrete. When she spoke again, she sounded very rattled, and a bit farther away.

“What? Of course I am! I can’t believe you’d _even ask me that_! Just finish your story, old man! And stop accusing me of being a pervert! You’re the one who’s a big old perv! God! I don’t even know what to think about you now! Seriously! Get your mind out of the gutter, dude!” Talking fast, sounding embarrassed, using words to push the blame off herself and onto him. He couldn’t see it, but Ellie was turning several shades of red out there.

He grinned and washed the back of his neck.

Caught you dead to rights, you sneaky little shit.

It was a natural curiosity for a girl her age, he reckoned. But still… he didn’t want to think about it too much. Not with the thoughts that had been bouncing around inside his own head these last few days.

Outside, she shuffled around lightly on the rough concrete, her body already growing warmer and drier in the rays of the morning sun. Something else was making her warm too.

_God, he’s so fucking naked in there right now. So big and wet and naked. And he almost caught me! I was just about to take a peek. Why did I wait so long? I should have made my move sooner, not waited as long as I did. Why the fucking fuck did I drag my feet about it?_

_Because he’d kill me if he caught me, that’s why._

_Don’t be such a pussy, Ellie’s inner voice. Grow some balls!_

_Shut up! I’m still working up my nerve!_

_We both are!_

_All he can do is kill you._

_Or spank you._

_Not helping, inner voice. Making shit worse, in fact._

_Just saying what we’re both thinking, Ellie. Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about it. Thought about misbehaving just to see what he would do… how he would punish a bad little girl like you?_

_I’m not little! I’m practically an adult now! And stay the fuck out of my head!_

_I can’t be anywhere else, Ellie… I know all your secrets, boo._

“ _As I was sayin_ ’,” Joel continued, determined to finish this story. “So I’m tryin’ to get up and not havin’ much luck at it. This big bastard grabs me from behind, by the back of my collar, pulls me up halfway off the ground, chokin’ me out. When all of a sudden, Tommy comes back from the Men’s Room. Sees the girl he had been hittin’ on screamin’ at the top of her lungs, sees me on the ground getttin’ choked to death, sees this big, tattooed sonuvabitch tryin’ to pop my damn head off…”

He let it hang there for just a moment, to build the tension. She couldn’t wait long.

“What did Tommy _do_?”

She sounded genuinely interested, almost on the edge of her seat, so to speak, which made him smile. He’d never been much of a storyteller, but today he was really on a roll. She also sounded a little bit closer to the door again. He let that slide. He didn’t want to embarrass her again. Hell, maybe he even wanted her to peek. Just a little bit. But he tried not to think about that. He didn’t want to embarrass himself either.

“He ran across the bar, jumped up on top of the pool table, and took that fucker down with a flying tackle,” Joel said triumphantly.

“Woo!” Ellie said, thrilled at this exciting twist in the story. She danced a little.

“Tore the green felt on that fancy table all to hell. The bartender put the damages on our bill. But, man, it was worth it. Tommy cracked that guy’s head on the ground and the two of us proceeded to kick the shit out of that asshole.”

“Sweet! Tommy is the best brother ever!” She was still shimmying in place with happiness. She knew that Joel obviously survived that encounter, but she didn’t want to hear that he had lost the fight. Joel didn’t lose fights, not in her mind. Not ever.

“Damn right he is, squirt.” He laughed, lathering his hair. He knew he was due for a haircut soon. His beard definitely needed trimming in the next day or two. “Can’t wait for you to meet him. You’ll like him. I know you will.”

“Can’t wait to meet him,” she bubbled happily, her hips slowly swaying. She hoped Tommy would just point them in the right direction. Tell them how to find the Fireflies but stay behind in Wyoming. In her mind, she knew that she would be even safer with an asskicker like Tommy in the group, but in her heart, she wanted Joel all to herself. “He sounds like a lot of fun, Joel.”

“He is. He loves kids too,” Joel said, happy to hear her speaking fondly of his kid brother so soon into the trip. This was very good news.

“He does? Awesome! I’m a kid! Well, sort of. I’m close enough still.” she said, giggling, hoping that Joel didn’t see her as a kid anymore, hoping that Tommy would just give them a map or some directions and leave her alone with his older brother for a while longer. Long enough for somebody on this team to seduce the other. “Good deal.”

Yeah. Good. He can take you off my hands, Joel thought, no longer smiling. You’ll be better off with him. Safer with him. He prefers women with big tits, like that girl in that bar. He won’t see you the way I’m starting to see you. He’s not sick like me. Sick like I’ve started to become since I met you. Didn’t want you around in the first place and I need to get you out of my life before I get too attached to you. Before I can’t bear to get rid of you. Before we’re friends… or something. Before I start thinking about you in that way… even more than I’m already doing. Goddamnit, what the fuck is wrong with me? When did I get all fucked up like this? I don’t want to be like this! Don’t want to think of somebody… young… like you…. like that… in _that_ way…

“So… did, like, a big bar room brawl break out? Like in the movies? Did you smash a bar stool over some fool’s head? Did the bartender fire a shotgun into the ceiling?”

“Hell no!” he laughed, deeply relieved for the welcome distraction. “I wouldn’t be standin’ here if that had happened! Me and Tommy were the only two anglos in the whole damn place. And on a weekday like that, there wasn’t too many other people in the joint, thank God. We were damn lucky we got out of there with our scalps.”

“‘Anglos’?” She repeated the unfamiliar word.

“What Mexicans call white people like you and me, kiddo,” he explained.

“I’m an ‘anglo’? _Neat_. I never knew that about myself.” She was clearly considering this new bit of information with much pleasure. She laughed again, her rolling musical notes ending in a small crescendo of delight. “ _Anglo_. I’m learning all sorts of stuff today. Like how you like to try to steal your brother’s girlfriends. Shame on you, by the way.”

“Renata wasn’t his girlfriend, squirt. He was just making plans in that general direction. She was just the kind of girl he liked, that’s all.”

“And what kind of girl is that?” She asked, interested in every detail she could dig from him and his story. “What does Tommy look for in a girl? Sense of humor? Pretty smile? Nice hair?”

“Any girl with big boobs, pretty much.” He laughed. She did too.

_God, I hope you aren’t like your brother, Joel. I won’t have much of a chance._

“Ah. And _you_ were planning to _steal her_. Don’t pretend you weren’t,” she giggled. “That’s just mean, Joel. No wonder Tommy moved to Wyoming. He needed to find a girlfriend with giant knockers that you wouldn’t be able to steal.”

Joel chuckled, a bit uncomfortably. He was so distracted by the unexpected awareness of just how deep the rift was between Tommy and himself now that he didn’t notice how her voice seemed to be right at the edge of a door again.

“Yeah. Something like that, I guess.” He tried to sound as natural as possible. She didn’t need to know about how badly things had ended between him and his brother. Not yet. Not until he had really sold her on the idea of Tommy as a worthy protector, as somebody she could feel safe with. Somebody he could hand her off to and get the hell back to Boston.

“You’re a terrible person, Joel,” she laughed, thrilled at this opportunity to tease him so openly. “If I had a brother, I wouldn’t go around stealing his girlfriends. No matter how big and jiggly her boobs were.”

He heard a thrill in her voice that gave it just a little bit of an edge, making her naturally high voice rise just a little bit higher as she reached the end of the sentence. He couldn’t have guessed that her heart was racing as she nibbled around the edge of a secret confession about herself.

“Shut up, you little shit,” he chuckled. The soap was starting to drip down into his eyes.

“So anything else exciting happen in Chula Vista? Did you steal any more of Tommy’s girlfriends?” She teased, nearer to the door that he could have guessed. She was very carefully turning her head away when she spoke, to hide how close she was. “Did you have any more exciting anglo adventures?”

Joel knew there was probably some reason that he found himself becoming increasingly uncomfortable as he had told this story. But he couldn’t recall why. There was something down there, inside his mind. Something he had put behind him a long time ago… Something down there… Something about Tommy… Something about the story of what had happened in Chula Vista, that guy he and Tommy had fought…

I was on a couch, sweet little Lisa was between my legs, she was still pretty, not covered in burn scars yet, that awful day in Sikeston was still months away, and her sad, lonely end in Clarksville right on the heels of that… She was always so kind, so gentle. I should have made a play for her. She wanted me to. Even then, that night, seeing how fucked up I was, she never stopped hoping I’d let her in. She just wanted me to care about her so she could care about me and not have to hide it, but I wasn’t in any shape for that, not after Alexa died, not after... Craig and Nicki were still alive too, but both of them would be dead by the next night, put down by Anthony’s machinegun. That sort of thing always came easy to Anthony. I should’ve seen that coming too… Anthony was in the doorway, his eyes on the street, but his ears listening to Tommy … Tommy was talking to the crew… Saying something about that bar in Chula Vista… telling the crew a story… keeping them distracted so they wouldn’t ask me any questions about where I’d been… I could still taste the vomit in my mouth. It tasted like banana cream pie filling…

He furrowed his brow, shook his soapy head, and tried not to think about it anymore. Some memories had to be buried so deep that you’d die before you ever dug them up. That’s just how life was in this shitty world. He had glimpsed the edge of something dark down there and wanted nothing to do with it. Shit happens and you move on.

What was it she had just said? Something about…

“A few, yeah,” he said, suddenly remembering her question. “We ran into these guys down on the border, a couple of bikers out of San Antonio. Rebel Angels. Pretty cool guys. They knew about this particular house down in Tijuana… Hang on a second, kiddo. I gotta dunk my head.”

Outside, she inhaled sharply, very faintly, too softly to carry to his ears. This was the moment she had been waiting for.

Ellie heard him take a deep breath, heard the big splash. She had been waiting for that moment. She couldn’t help herself. She took peek. Just a quick one. Super quick. Super duper quick. He never saw, his eyes were closed under the water inside the big square plastic bin. She poked her head inside the doorway briefly, barely for a single second, one quick heartbeat before she lost her nerve and ducked out again, retreating to the safety of the concrete and the sunlight outside.

_Holy fuck! I did it! I actually did it!_

_Good job, girl. I’m proud of you!_

_Thanks, inner voice. Couldn’t have done it without you and your relentless peer pressure._

She sighed contentedly, her eyes fixed on the big silver screen, reviewing the mental snapshot in her mind. The little bathroom sink and counter top was built directly across from the doorway. His back had been to her.

_Oh man… oh wow…_

Both his large hands gripped on the edges of the bin, holding it firmly in place, the big muscles of his arms wet and shining; the powerful thighs; big feet planted widely apart so he wouldn’t slip on the wet floor; the broad back glistening in the sunlight; water splashing out, running down the wide shoulders in little rivers, slowly trickling its way down his body, lower and lower; his tight, compact ass, not at all like the rounder, softer ones she had seen on the girls in the school showers; and of course, the tantalizing glimpse of what was dangling below his sexy muscular butt; the dude parts hanging between his open thighs. She shivered at the memory of it. The big, round orbs dangling there like fruit or something, the longer thing half-hidden on the other side of them, like a big hotdog, not hard, like the ones in Bill’s pilfered magazine, but still big and… sorta silly and cute looking, somehow. She stepped lightly, restlessly from one small foot to the other, her heart pounding, her body brimming with energy, pulsing with faint electric tingles. She remembered how that incredibly tantalizing part of him had swayed from side to side slightly as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other and back as he swirled his head around inside the bin.

_Wow._

_Just… wow!_

_Man, my dreams are going to be so much more detailed after this._

She slipped further away from the door, practically skipping around in circles on giddy feet. She took up her position as sentry again. She couldn’t stop smiling. She sighed deeply, happily. She was very horny. She couldn’t wait to get under the blanket tonight.

_I have to work up the nerve to suggest we start taking baths together to save water or something. Gotta find a way to see him naked like that again. Even if it means he gets to see me naked too. Not that I don’t want him too. I just want –_

_Wait, what if he already did the same thing to me? What if he waited until he knew my eyes were closed? What if he…_

_Oh my God! He wouldn’t do that! Not to me! Not while I was naked! Oh my God, I would die from embarrassment! I’m not sexy like him! He wouldn’t do that to me! I’m just a dumb kid to him! Right?_

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, tried to stop from thinking about this, about him, about herself, about where this was going. Couldn’t. The thoughts rolled along like a rushing river inside her.

_Fuck! No way he’d do that! He’s not a horny little pervert like me! He’d never check out my little butt! My itty bitty titties! He wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t._

Her green eyes began to dart around wildly under her eyelids, considering the possibilities.

_But what if he did?_

She licked her lips, opened her eyes, looked up the big puffy clouds floating so high above. She hoped someone up there was looking out for her. Her mom? No. That would be weird.

Riley! If anybody would put in a good word for her up there, it would be Riley.

_Man, I hope he did. I don’t care if it’s wrong. I hope he saw me. I want him to see me._

She knew that Riley would be so proud of her right now. Riley had always said having a man in her life would fix a little bit of the weirdo inside her. She had always laughed when she said it. From anybody but her, the words would have been mean, cruel. But from Riley, the words were always said with love.

_Holy cow. Guess I’m not quite as much of a lesbian as I thought I was, Riley. You were always so boy crazy, but you were willing to slide a little my way that morning in Boston. I guess I can slide a little his way now. Wow. Guess you were right about me. A good hard stiff dick might do me some good. Sure, that one in there wasn’t stiff, but it sure looked pretty good to me. And I have one heck of an imagination. I think I fill in the blanks for a while._

She smiled up at the clouds, exhaling softly, a little sadly, missing her friend. A new perception of herself began to percolate up from below.

_Holy shit. It’s official. I’m bisexual, I guess._

_Guess you were right about me, Riley. You knew the truth about me, even if I didn’t._

_Guess he knows the truth now too. I’m not like that bleach blonde Melody Phillips. No, sir. This girl is a natural redhead._

She couldn’t help herself. She began to giggle, softly at first but getting louder quickly. She pressed her small fist firmly against her mouth but couldn’t stop. It spilled from her lips, floated across the grassy field in front of the big silver screen, rang like little bells inside the walls of the little bathroom. Her eyes were wide, hopeful, a little crazy.

“What are you laughin’ about, kid?” His voice had an edge to it she couldn’t guess at. No man wanted to hear a woman’s laughter while he was naked, not even Joel, not even around an oddball little virgin like Ellie who had better absofuckinlutely not have sneaked a peek just now if she wanted to live to see the ripe old age of fifteen one of these days and not find herself unexpectedly clonked over the head and buried in front of the concession stand of the Dixie Star Drive-In Theater at the tragic age of however-the-fuck-old she was and goddammit why couldn’t she be just a couple of years older?!

“Umm…” She blinked rapidly, looked around wildly for inspiration. She had to maintain her cover as a good sentry, as a good partner.

_Sidekicks don’t peek. Robin never saw the BatCock, Ellie. Get it together!_

She had to think fast. She cleared her throat. “Okay. So… The other day I sent my friend a huge pile of snow…”

“Oh Christ. _Really_?” He asked, chuckling, toweling off inside the little room, sure now that she wasn’t laughing at him, certain that she hadn’t taken a peek, relieved to know she had her nose in that damn pun book again. Not exactly something a sentry should do, but he could scold her about that later, when his pride wasn’t at stake. “Can’t I just take a bath in peace? Is that askin’ too much?”

“I called her up later and said ‘Did you get my _drift_?’” Ellie continued, undaunted, sprightly. She laughed in her infectious, adorable fashion as she delivered the punchline. “Get it? Like a snowdrift!”

He grumbled good-naturedly and wrapped a towel around his waist, wishing that he’d thought to bring his sweatpants in here with him earlier. He hadn’t even realized he’d forgotten them until he was already washing his legs. He stepped out into the daylight, his bare, wet feet slapping softly onto the warm concrete, his other towel draped over one strong shoulder. She looked up at him, holding the big scoped Winchester across her waist, moving it a little to keep the barrel pointed way from him, her small, firm breasts outlined cleanly beneath her thin shirt, her eyes sparkling, her white teeth shining in the sun. She tried very, very hard not to notice how good he looked in that damp towel. He tried even harder not to look at her alluringly bare legs. She had shaved them, he noticed, wishing that he hadn’t, though it explained why the hell she had been in there so long and why there was a little disposable razor on the countertop, one that he was pretty sure she had swiped from the pretty lady at the Motel 6.

He saw that she wasn’t holding one of her joke books. His eyebrows went up in mock concern.

“Jesus. _Please_ tell me you ain’t wastin’ your brain cells by memorizin’ those awful jokes, girl.”

“I used to work in a towel factory, Joel,” she began, thrilled to be teased by him, to have him as a friend, a partner, to have him in her life in any capacity she could, but especially happy to have him standing here in nothing but a towel.

She leaned in towards him just a bit, holding back on the punchline to really sell the joke, giddy, the corners of her eyes crinkling with mirth, the edges of her succulent mouth pulling wider into a grin with each word. She held his cool, dark eyes with her own greener, prettier ones. The way she shifted the weight of the rifle, keeping it pointed safely out at the grass, pulling her arms in a little, as she leaned closer to him, pushed her breasts together slightly, forming a small but inviting line of cleavage at the tugged-down neckline of her clingy shirt. She delicately placed the arch of one foot over the toes of the other, her knees together now, trying hard to push away a sudden wave of shyness that was sweeping over her as she dared to stand so close to this mostly-naked man who was bringing out so many new feelings in her, drawing them out of her so effortlessly that she was sure it had to be magic. She hadn’t the slightest inkling of how much of an appealingly innocent, sensuous, little devil she was to him at that moment, tempting him with desires he so dearly wished he didn’t feel. In a million years, she never could have guessed how much he wanted her in that instant, as he stood there, glistening with droplets of bath water, feeling the cool, late morning breeze on his exposed skin, the damp towel tight around his hips, trying to keep himself from swelling against the front of the thick white cloth, waiting for the terrible punchline to come, thinking of taking this enchanting little virgin, laying her down, right there on the warm, soft grass in front of the concrete, under the clouds, naked, both of them, pressed together, wrapped up in his arms, doing the things she dreamed of, the things that she had been fantasizing about, the very same thoughts he found so distressing. The things neither of them could stop thinking about. The things he knew he shouldn’t do. The things she half-understood, but craved nonetheless, in the way that the inexperienced want something they’ve never known but need all the same. The things that neither suspected the other was also thinking about, not even daring to hope for, not even for a moment.

Very subtly, he shifted his grip on the towel around his waist.

“But it _folded_!” she said, sparkling with mirth. “Get it?”

She cackled. He groaned. Their sounds mixed together beautifully and drifted across the grassy field.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So now Ellie has officially seen Joel naked. What? Don’t look at me like that! Ladies enjoy a little eye-candy too. They’re all a bunch of teeny little perverts. Don’t let them fool you, fellas. ;-)
> 
> “I know all your secrets, boo.” Apparently, Ellie’s long-running inner monologue sounds like Riley to her. At least, the half of monologue that she often has conversations with does.
> 
> Also, before anyone gets upset and starts posting about Ellie’s notion that “a good, stiff dick might do her some good,” remember that she’s recalling advice given to her by Riley, a fifteen or sixteen year old girl who probably didn’t know that Ellie was (mostly) a lesbian at the time she said it. Ellie is remembering those words with a sort of loving irony. In retrospect, Riley wasn’t entirely wrong, even though neither of them could have known that at the time. Life is funny like that sometimes. ;-)
> 
> Drop by again on Saturday in time to see Joel and Ellie return to the highway in Chapter Nineteen: Diesel.


	19. Diesel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie and Joel continue their journey down the broken highways of America. Ellie remembers a difficult time that brought her closer to Riley.

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 19 – Diesel**

 

Dark clouds were gathering overhead. A storm was coming. It had rained the night before, at the drive-in. They had been safe and dry inside the old projector building. They probably wouldn’t be so lucky tonight. Ellie turned her eyes down from the sky and tried to think about something other than the damp, miserable night ahead of her. She looked at the thick, green forests lining both sides of the road. More then ten days out of Boston – she had begun to lose track of the exact count, no calendars out here, beyond the walls of the zone – and she still wasn’t tired of looking at the woods.

The dogwood trees were in bloom, lending the edges of US Highway 36 a lovely white filigree. From her place on the back of the Honda, Ellie drank in the beauty of the red and white blossoms. Even Joel smiled at the sight of it. There were dogwood trees in Texas.

_I remember that lonely potted flower on the roof of the dormitory. The little white flower, growing up there in the sunshine, so pretty and alone. One of the older students, a girl named Bonnie, it was her flower. Riley said Bonnie had found it growing at the edge of the pig enclosure, in one of the lots on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. I wonder what on earth Bonnie had done to deserve that work detail. Somehow, Bonnie had snuck it back to the dorms, roots and all. She scrounged up that little clay pot, filled it with whatever soil she could collect and hid it up on the roof, where it would have lots of sunlight and rain. Riley showed me where it was hidden on the roof. She wanted me to see it, made sure I understood that this was a secret she was sharing with me._

_I never met Bonnie. She left just as I was arriving, at the start of the second semester of 2032, the first week of May, just last year. She had turned sixteen in February. When the end of the first semester came at the end of April, the school was done with her. She didn’t want to join the army, so they threw her out, made her a civilian. Two weeks later, her name just happened to come up on the draft for outside work assignments. The day after that, she was killed by a clicker in the little town of Bridgewater, while she was looking for tools and clothes and cans of food. The soldier assigned to protect her wasn’t keeping an eye on her, wasn’t anywhere near her. He was off flirting with some new guy in his team. She was a civilian. She wasn’t allowed to carry any weapons. She had been told that the soldiers would keep her safe but they were only concerned with making sure she kept working. She died in the lobby of a little appliance repair shop, trying to kill a clicker with a pair of dull pliers. It was her first and only day outside the wall of the QZ. She was only sixteen years old._

_That’s the story Riley told me, anyway. That’s what she told me when we snuck up on the roof that day and I asked where the pretty little flower had come from. Riley had known Bonnie. I think they may have been friends. Riley didn’t want to talk about her much._

Ellie sighed and shifted in her seat. Her bladder was full.

_I would go up to Bonnie’s little flower every few days and stare at it. Back then, I liked to imagine the whole world outside the walls of Boston was covered with millions of little flowers just like that one. I wanted to believe that Bonnie had seen the world outside and saw that it was carpeted with beautiful little blossoms like the one she had saved from the pigs. But she didn’t, because it isn’t._

_Damn, I sure wanted to believe it though. Maybe Bonnie did too._

She shifted again. She would have to ask Joel for a pit stop soon. ‘Pit stop’, that’s what he insisted on calling them. Sounded more grown up than ‘potty break’, which was what she had said the first time, embarrassingly, like something a little kid would say, as they drove past that little abandoned ranch, just before they turned off and went north, to try their luck at the big lake, only to find that there were already people there, lots of them at their little fortress town. She remembered the big dog and the pretty woman in the white swimsuit. It was just a few days ago, a week maybe, since she lay on that hill and studied the town through the scope of her rifle, but it seemed so far back that the memory of it was starting to blur around the edges, just a little. She wondered if this was how time passed for everyone ‘on the trail’, as he liked to say. Maybe that was one of the reasons he didn’t like to talk about the past. Maybe he couldn’t remember it very clearly anymore. Her older memories were still crystal clear though. She couldn’t forget.

_I never got tired of staring at Bonnie’s flower. Sometimes Riley would sit with me and we’d talk about stuff while I lay there on my stomach, feet up in the air, my chin in my hands, just looking at it. Other times she would sit there in silence, watching me watching it. I wondered what she was thinking. She never said and I never asked._

_It was Winston who told her that Bonnie had died. One night, we snuck down to his camp to ride Princess and hang out with one of the few cool adults we knew. He took Riley aside while I was climbing up on the horse, told her something, I couldn’t hear what. Riley hid her face from me and told me it was time to head back. I didn’t understand why. I thought maybe we had gotten Winston in trouble or something. But I didn’t fight her over it. She said we had to go, so we had to go._

_When we got to the alley behind the school, just as I was about to climb the fence, Riley suddenly burst into tears. I guess she couldn’t hold it in any longer. I didn’t know why she was crying. I just hugged her as hard as I could, for as long as she’d let me. Which was a long time, looking back on it._

_The next day, Riley took me up to the roof and showed me the flower. Riley finally told me about Bonnie and how she had died outside the wall. Riley started to cry again, just a little. I cried too. Just a little._

Joel downshifted, dropping their speed as another cluster of immobile, corroded traffic revealed itself to them as they came around a bend in the road. There were plenty of gaps through the tangle to be found, but it had to be navigated at a safer speed. She knew it was time for her to go to work.

She worked loose the slipknot that held her cut-down shotgun snug to her chest. Careful to keep the loop of the sling safely over one arm, she gripped the gun in both hands and took up her role as sentry.

She caught Joel’s eyes in the rearview mirror, looking back, checking to see if she was on the job. She nodded proudly, already at her duties before he thought to check on her. One corner of his mouth came up in a tight smile.

Good girl, he seemed to say.

He eased them between the clusters of cars. Inside the front seat of a minivan, a runner thumped against the windshield, enraged by the sight of them but unable to reach them through the glass. Ellie noticed that one of the runner’s hands was handcuffed to the steering wheel. Whoever that man had been, he had planned ahead.

Almost directly to their right, twenty feet of so away, a cluster of almost a dozen runners emerged from the woods, appearing through the dense line of blossoming trees as though they were materializing from a thick, sweet-smelling fog. A lone clicker stumbled along a few steps behind them.

She saw the monsters break into a sprint. She dutifully tapped Joel on his shoulder.

“On our right! Runners!”

He nodded, daring a glance towards them as he squeezed the bike through another knot of dead cars. The end of the traffic snarl was getting closer, but so were the runners chasing after them. Thunder rumbled in the darkening sky overhead.

“Keep ‘em off us!” he shouted back at her, never taking his eyes off the cluttered road.

She swiveled around at the waist, her knees clenched to the sides of the bike, her shoes pressing tightly against the foot pegs for support. Her bladder protested this new development. She grimaced, toughing it out with gritted teeth.

_Oh please please please don’t let them catch us and don’t let me piss all over this seat, because either way I’ll die._

She kept the shotgun leveled at the lead runner, now directly behind the slow-moving motorcycle – twenty feet and closing the gap fast. She wouldn’t shoot until there was no other option. Ammo for her small scattergun was simply too scarce.

She watched him charging forward, legs pumping with inhuman stamina, coming closer, inch by inch, mouth open, arms outstretched, shrieking wildly. Her heart began to race as adrenaline surged through her. Her entire body was incredibly alive in that moment. The danger made her eyes go wide, her pupils dilated, and she forgot all about her bladder.

He was almost close enough to grab them, so close that she could have stretched out the barrels of her gun and brushed his fingertips with them.

_Sorry, buddy. But it’s you or me._

She pulled the gun snug against her shoulder, her finger tightened on the rear trigger. Two shells loaded, three more in her jacket pocket. That’s all she had left.

They sailed past the last car and Joel twisted the throttle. The engine revved and the vibrations it produced surged into her. She winced, trying to ignore the pleasurable sensations rippling their way up from the seat and into her amped-up, adrenaline-soaked body. The infected fell behind quickly, she wasn’t needed on sentry duty any longer. She turned around to face the road, hugging the shotgun to her chest and securing it tightly with a well-made slipknot, and tried her best to ignore her full bladder and the amazingly awesome tingles pulsating through her from the motorcycle seat. The need for one seemed to trigger the need for the other sometimes and she hated that. Those urges ought to be completely separate from each other. She grimaced inside her helmet. It was like her body was out to get her these days.

She placed her hands on the straps of Joel’s backpack and resisted the urge to discretely slip one hand between her thighs. She wouldn’t have to even go that far, really. She had learned that merely pressing on her lower belly a little when her bladder was full was intensely pleasurable. It made her feel like a weirdo, like something was wrong with her.

Ellie was certain he wouldn’t be able to see if he checked his mirror. From his angle, It would look like she was gripping his belt, and there was just enough of a gap between the two of them, just enough for one small hand, provided she was smart about it. She was absolutely sure she could totally get away with it if she chose to. But she didn’t want to allow herself that sort of indulgence, not in broad daylight, now with him sitting right there in front of her. She wasn’t that kind of girl and wouldn’t allow herself to become that kind of girl. She knew she was a better person than that. She wasn’t somebody who would do that, no matter what sort of terrible lies her body was telling her about herself, whispering to her, telling her who she really was, deep down inside.

_Fuck, this is happening all the time now. It’s this damn engine. Fuck._

She tried to remember the little flower, how Riley had teased her at first for watering it in secret during the long, hot days when no rain fell.

_Riley…_

She remembered that day in Boston. Their last day together. Lying on the roof of the abandoned mall, in the shade of the big air conditioner unit. She remembered how scared they had been and how Riley had worked so hard to turn their fear into something else. Something better. She remembered the sweet taste of Riley’s mouth against hers, the softness of her brown lips, the feel of Riley’s hands on her body, sliding up, working their way across her body gently, slipping inside her shirt. One of the hands had a small bandage wrapped around it, but they both made a great effort to ignore it. She remembered that brown hand dancing across her pale skin, unhooking her bra with one graceful gesture. Riley was so damn cool about all kinds of stuff like that.

_Fuck this damn motorcycle! These shitty vibrations are making me horny all the fucking time lately. Can’t even fucking think straight because of it. Fuck me! Why does it have to feel so fucking good when we’re going this fast? Especially when I have to piss this bad. Slow down, Joel! Fucking slow down already! It’s too intense! Please! I’m gonna…_

The bike juddered over a particularly rough strip of asphalt.

_OH! GOD!_

She lowered her head, formed her lips into a thin line, tried to focus on anything other than the pressures building inside her, getting tangled together, confusing her, prodding her inexorably towards a dual release she didn’t even want to think about.

_Ah! Fuck me! I’m either gonna cum or I’m gonna piss myself. Or both!_

Joel slowed down as they rounded another curve and saw a long strip of open road ahead. Inside her helmet, Ellie groaned with relief as the vibrations diminished to a more manageable tempo. The closed visor helped to muffle most of the sound, the engine hid the rest. Joel never heard, never suspected. She shivered. She had been very close to the edge.

They left the patch of dogwoods in bloom behind, a lovely white adornment along the green shore that bounded the black river of Highway 36.

 

* * *

 

_Okay. It’s gotta be now. Right now. I can’t wait any longer. I’m gonna have an accident and he’ll never look at me the same way again._

Ellie tapped Joel on the shoulder rapidly, urgently.

“Pit Stop!” she shouted. “Number one!”

“Other side of that hill, okay?” he said, glancing back at her, gesturing with his left hand at a hill a few miles and several minutes away.

“NO!!” She shook her head emphatically. “Can’t wait!”

Irritation flickered across his face and he turned his narrowed eyes back to the road.

“ _Please_ , Joel!” she whined, gripping his shoulder urgently, wiggling around on the seat behind him to make her point. “Goddammit! _Pleeeeeeassseeee_!!”

“Fine. Hold your horses, damn it.” He slowed down, drifting towards the edge of the road.

“Can’t! Been holding them for too long! Stop!” she said, sounding more frantic with each revolution of the Honda’s wheels. She patted his shoulder rapidly. “StopStopStopStop!!”

“ _I am_!” he growled, not happy with her sudden demands. She didn’t care. She didn’t have time to care about anything that wasn’t her bladder. He would just have to get over it.

The brakes gave a soft squeal. No sooner had the bike stopped moving than her shoes hit the pavement.

“Back in two shakes,” she said, repeating a phrase that she had heard him use, liking the sound of it but unsure what it was that she was supposed to be shaking.

She laid her shotgun on the ground, flipped open the saddle bag, grabbed a fistful of toilet paper from the jumbo roll Joel had taken from the sports stadium days before, didn’t bother to close the lid. He could do that, she had what she wanted and had lost all interest in the compartment, the bike, the shotgun, everything that wasn’t those woods over there.

“Don’t go anywhere, okay?” She asked, looking up from where she knelt, briefly making eye contact with him, the helmet still on her head, the visor down, muffling her voice.

“Where the hell would I go?” he started to ask, but she was already gone, running for the dense tree line to his right, wadded paper in one hand, her pistol in the other, helmet snug on her head. She was clearly prepared for anything life was about to throw at her.

“Don’t look!” she shouted, her voice suppressed by her helmet, as she dashed through the tall grass and disappeared into the woods.

“Why the hell does she always say that?” he asked to the gentle winds blowing across the blacktop. He killed the engine. He might be here a while. Thunder rumbled overhead.

 

* * *

 

_Boys are so fucking lucky. Just unzip and write your name on the side of a tree._

She bunched her jeans and underwear around her knees, trying to keep everything pinned in place before squatting down.

_Boys never have to worry about getting their underwear wet or soaking their damn shoes. God! Why do boys suck so fucking much?_

She eased herself down into the tall grass, braced one hand against a tree to steady herself, the hand with the pistol. She took one more quick look around, hated feeling so fucking vulnerable, knowing she wouldn’t be able to run if something came charging out of the woods at this moment, angry about the size of her tiny bladder. She knew Joel was going to give her a ton of crap for not going before they left the drive-in that morning, for sneaking too many sips from her water bottle as they cruised along, for not being able to hold it in longer than she had. She tried to push it all out of her head long enough to relax… just a little bit… just enough to… to…

She sighed with great relief.

_Forty minutes I’ve needed to do this. Forty minutes, at least. Fuck, I didn’t think I was gonna make it this time. God, he’s gonna give me such a hard time about this when I get back to the bike. But, come on!! It’s not my fault. Fuck! If you gotta go, you gotta go!_

Another rolling rumble of thunder. She and Joel would be wet tonight. It didn’t matter. Not at the moment. All she could focus on was the welcome relief she was experiencing.

She noticed a cluster of little white flowers growing near the side of the tree, next to the pistol in her hand.

_It was in a million tiny pieces._

Tears began to well in the corner of her eyes.

_Someone had walked through the mess, crushed it._

One of the second year boys had found Bonnie’s little flower, and tossed it off the roof. Ellie had heard him talking about it with his dumb friends. She didn’t want to believe it, remembered going out to find it, walking all the way around the dorm building looking for it. She had stood there, angry and confused, looking at the shards of reddish pottery scattered across the old gray sidewalk, the clumps of dirt, the broken stem and crushed petals.

_There was no fucking reason for it._

That was her first day in ‘the box’, the collective name for the row of five concrete and iron corrective containers behind the dorm, near the asphalt track the kids used to run in formation every morning. With no shade back there, the damn things were a strip of sweltering ovens during the day. Twelve hours in one of the boxes felt like a lifetime. Twenty-four hours felt like an eternity in hell. But it had been absolutely worth it.

She had chanced across the boy in the lunchroom, as the girls were coming in and the boys walking out. He was still talking about it, bragging about it, describing it in great detail to his stupid friends, all of them boys who loved to break and hurt things the way she was certain all boys do. Her fists had found a lunch tray, one of the big heavy plastic ones, on the ground by the trashcans as she stood in line patiently, waiting for the girls in front of her to make their way past the cafeteria servers. It had been Salisbury steak day. Fresh-ish salad. White cake with a paper-thin layer of yellow frosting for dessert. They got the good food on Sunday. She had scooped the big tray up in her furious little hands, charged out of line and leapt at him, breaking it in half over his stupid head. He’d needed three stitches to close the wound. She was crying when she did it, crying when the guard carried her away.

Riley wasn’t her roommate yet. Ellie was down on floor one, the floor for first year girls, assigned to a dark room with a busted light. She hated that room, hated the nights spent in there in darkness, all alone. The other freshman girls thought she was so lucky to be the ‘leftover’ student, the very last girl on the list, the one whose name started with a ‘W’, the odd number on the roster, the one who didn’t have to share her space with a roommate. They thought she had really lucked out. None of them understood. Not one bit.

But Riley understood. Like Ellie, she was a bit of a problem child. They were already becoming friends by this point, even though Ellie was a freshman and Riley a third year student, a senior. Riley let Ellie sit next to her while the older girl hung out with her older friends. Ellie didn’t say much, wasn’t asked to say much. But she was tolerated by the other kids and Riley was making a point to include her in the group’s hangout sessions after classes. Riley had her own room too, mostly because all of the other senior girls upstairs were either afraid of her or afraid that she would get them into trouble.

_Riley was waiting for me the next day at sundown, when they finally unlocked the lid and pulled me out. She was waiting on the edge of the track, as near as she could without being told to step back. She’d ditched class early to be there and got a demerit for it. My legs were so weak from being balled up like that, trying to fit inside that little space for a whole day. I don’t know how the bigger, older girls did it. The evening grass was hot and dry under my fingers as the pair of soldiers left laying me there and walked away. I didn’t think I could stand. I was afraid I’d have to crawl. She knelt down, helped me up, walked me to the freshman girl’s showers on floor one, letting me lean on her every step of the way. All the younger girls scattered at the sight of Riley. She had a hell of reputation. A few of the girls admired Riley, just like I did. Those girls were so jealous of me. She waited outside the showers, keeping the other freshmen girls away while I cleaned up. I was glad to have the showers to myself. After a full day in the box, I was a real mess. Sometime around noon, I’d had to pee. I’d held it as long as I could. But I couldn’t hold it forever. Riley never teased me about it. She’d been in the box a few times herself._

_After I was all cleaned up, she took me to the back of the cafeteria, to the little alley by the loading dock, where that senior girl, Cherry, snuck some food out to me. A grilled cheese sandwich. Freshly made, just for me. I wanted to hug Riley and Cherry so fucking badly, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep from crying if I did, so I didn’t. Cherry hung out with us for a little bit. She said she was impressed that I would go bugfuck crazy in front of the whole cafeteria like that. She had been on serving line duty at the time. She had seen me do it. She said I was sort of cool for a little freshman runt. But she had to get back to her duties before she was caught, so Riley and me sat on the edge of the concrete loading dock for a while, talking. Riley didn’t care if she got in trouble. She didn’t mind sitting with me. The sun was just starting to set and she looked so beautiful in the golden light shining through the old metal chain link fence._

_Riley told me how I had almost got expelled while I was in the box, asked me why I’d done it. I didn’t know what to say. I tried to tell her about the poor little broken flower, all twisted up and dying in the sun, but all my words came out stupid. I started to cry. She put her arm around me. I sobbed like a fucking baby. I had never cried in front of anyone, not like that. Not ever. She must have thought I was fucking idiot. Or a big baby. Or God knows what._

_Riley had held me close without saying a word and just let me cry until all the tears were out in the sunlight, drying on my dumb, freckled, chipmunk cheeks. She let me blow my nose on that blue bandana she always kept in her pocket. I never forgot that simple act of kindness. By that point, me and Riley had already snuck out at night several times to get into trouble, mostly by pestering Winston into letting us ride his horse around the mall, but I didn’t know that badass Riley had a soft side too, not until that day behind the cafeteria. I offered Riley half of my sandwich, once I was done crying. I knew it was dumb, but I didn’t know how else to repay her. Riley took a bite and insisted I eat the rest. I did. I saved the spot where she took a bite for last. I always save the best for last._

_The next day, one of the dorm managers came to my room just before lights out. It was a Monday. He said that two new freshmen girls were being transferred over from Dorms T-2 and T-3 in the morning. Shelly Walsh and Cindy Wellstone. They were getting my room because their last names came before Williams on the roster. He told me that the only available bunk in the entire dorm was up on floor five. He told me I had ten minutes to get packed and come with him. I had so few things, I was ready to go in three minutes._

_Riley was waiting for me at the door when I was let into her room. I smiled when I saw her but I got scared quick when I saw her clenched fists and her angry frown. She glowered at me, crossed her arms, and didn’t say a word as the manager made me sign my name on the fifth floor roster. She was clearly very unhappy to be losing her private room at the end of the hall. She didn’t want a roommate. She’d spent two solid years building a badass reputation just so other girls would beg not to be assigned to a room with her. And now here came this snot-nosed little freshman who had no fucking business being up on the fifth floor with the senior girls. I was so scared of her at the moment. I didn’t want the manager to leave. I knew for sure that my friendship with Riley was over. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t ask to be moved. My hand shook as I signed the forms._

_As soon as the dorm manager left, Riley shouted at me, grabbed my shoulders, dragged me to the middle of the room, made me stand at attention. I was on the verge of tears while she laid down the ground rules in her best scary voice. There were a lot of them and they got funnier and more absurd the longer she recited them to me. She was fucking with me. I was so relieved. I wanted to smile, but she said I didn’t have permission to enjoy myself. She reminded me that I was just a shitty little freshman and she was a big sexy senior. She would let me know when my sorry excuse for an ass had permission to enjoy life again, which would probably be never so I’d just better get used to being sad. Then she told me I had to sleep on the bottom shelf of the bookcase because she needed both the bunk beds because she liked the extra leg room. I started laughing, I couldn’t help myself. She did too. She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me close._

_“Welcome home, boo,” she said. I fell in love with her right then and there. It was so fucking hard not to start crying again. So fucking hard. I held onto her and never wanted to let her go. She finally had to pry herself loose from me. I said that I was only clinging to her because I was afraid she was going to beat me if she got me at arm’s length. We had a good laugh about it. I wanted to hug her again, but didn’t dare try it. It was the best Tuesday of my life._

Her bladder finally empty, Ellie reached down to dry herself with the wad of paper. She winced, gasped. The damn vibrations from that engine had been getting to her all day. She couldn’t remember being so tender and swollen, not like this, not since that morning on the rooftop with Riley. She ached from the non-stop stimulation of the big Honda.

_Fuck, this is embarrassing! What is wrong with me today? Why can’t I just ignore it like I did when we first got the bike? Before I started dreaming about him all the time?_

Her fingers lingered on herself, the paper damp, their job done, but not ready to depart.

She knew she shouldn’t. Joel was waiting, probably already wondering what was taking her so damn long.

But…

_I have to take care of this. It’s going to drive me crazy if I don’t._

The paper dropped from small fingers suddenly busy with something else.

She moaned softly, only the forest heard her.

_I gotta do this. I’ll be super quick._

This time, she wanted to think of Riley while she did it, not Joel. She’d had an amazing dream about him last night, one that involved that sexy red nightie she’d found at the Motel 6. He’d been so rough with her, just a little mean, making her obey his commands, not asking, just telling. She had been scared of him in the dream, but in a good way. It was so hot. She’d started this day off happy and horny because of that dream, and she made a mental note to return to it another time. But today she wanted to think about Riley. She didn’t want to forget her. She already felt guilty that she was dreaming about Joel as much as she was, which was pretty much every night now. Riley was still dear to her, still in her heart, forever the first love of her life. But it had been more than a month since that night Riley had appeared out of the blue and woke her up with a nibble to the neck. More than a month since she had left her friend behind. She was ready to think of her again. She forced the smoldering dream of bossy Joel and his sexy orders away for now, recalled that last morning she’d spent with Riley instead. It wasn’t a dream. It had actually happened. That made it all the better.

The memory of Riley’s lips, the rooftop in Boston, the midday sun beating down, the coolness of the shade of the big A/C unit, the delicious wetness of Riley’s tongue in her mouth, the feel of Riley’s wonderful body, so soft and firm under her own inexperienced, eager fingers, searching out all the most wonderful places of her best and only friend…

The whisper of her strained voice carried faintly into the tall grass rippling in the gentle breeze, long slender green fingers brushing against her legs, underneath her, tickling her.

“ _Riley_ …”

 

* * *

 

Ellie returned to the edge of the woods, carrying her helmet by the chinstrap, smiling and relaxed, humming a favorite song. She’d tried to whistle it, but she hadn’t learned to make all the notes yet. She stepped out of from the shade of the trees and saw the road waiting for her.

Joel and the bike were gone.

Her eyes went wide. She ran to the place where then bike had been, her heart beating out of her chest, her legs numb. An irrational thought exploded into her mind.

_Oh God! He left me! He knows! He knows what I did! He knows I was wasting time playing with myself! He knows and he ditched me!_

“oh god…”she whimpered, her voice cracking, her blood cold. The helmet slipped from her hand and clattered on edge of the pavement. “… no…”

_I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I just wanted… I didn’t mean to… I’m so sorry…_

“Ellie!” Joel’s voice. From somewhere across the road, trying to be loud while still being quiet. “ _Hide_!!”

She dashed for the nearest large shrub, going to ground quickly, like a good sidekick should, because that’s what she was. She would prove it to him and to herself as many times as it took. She drew her pistol, wished she had her shotgun too.

_Oh thank God. You didn’t leave me, Joel. You didn’t leave me. We’re partners, partners don’t do that to each other. Partners stick together._

“Get the damn helmet!” he hissed from wherever he was across the road.

_Son of a fucking bitch!_

She dashed out, practically on all fours, grabbed it, and scuttled back to the concealment of the big, fat shrub. Clutching her pistol, she curled up beneath the bush, becoming a tiny, well-armed ball. She remembered being inside the box, remembered the stifling heat, the burning thirst. She pushed it out of her mind. She had to be here now. Right now. Or who knows what might happen.

_What is it? What’s wrong? Why are we hiding? Hunters? Crazies? Oh God, I wish he were over here. I wish he was right here beside me. We could cover each other._

Pressed against the damp earth, forcing herself to be as quiet as she could, she felt it before she heard it. A low distinctive rumble, different from the thunder sounding in the clouds above her. She recognized the sound from her days in Boston.

_A diesel engine! A big one! And more than one of them._

She lay beneath the thick canopy of leafy branches, trying to be as small as possible, dreading the approach of the vehicles. Thinking quickly, she tucked the red metallic helmet under the edge of the black denim jacket. Camouflaged! She wished Joel had been there to see how clever she was, how good of a sidekick she was, because she was, damn it, she was a great sidekick. She could be both a kick ass partner and a teenager who was masturbating constantly, mostly to thoughts of her older partner. She could be both of those things if she wanted to be. Multitasking, damn it. That was a thing, and she was good at it. And why the hell was she even thinking about any of this at a time like this?!

Beneath the sky filled with dark, rain-saturated clouds, beneath the covering of the thick green bush, Ellie’s eyes grew wide as they drove into view. She whimpered in fear.

There were four of them in all, painted black and emblazoned with the FEDRA logo. ‘US ARMY - Cleveland QZ’ was stenciled beneath the logo on every door. She was reminded of the vehicles of the Ohio National Guard and the beautiful shields painted on all their shattered vehicles, shields that couldn’t protect the poor displaced people of Ohio, no matter how hard the men behind those lovely shields had tried.

A Humvee led the way, like the one that had hounded them through Pittsburgh, straddling the centerline of the blacktop, undisputed king of this road. A soldier manned the turret on top, his hand on the controls of a big, heavy weapon, something that wasn’t a machine gun. The barrel was too short, too stubby, too wide. Big, fat bullets hung from the weapon, large brass casings belted together with joined links, a long chain of them coming up from an oversized ammunition box mounted on the side of the gun. She would ask Joel later what sort of gun it was and he would tell her it was a 40mm automatic grenade launcher, probably filled with something called ‘canister rounds’, giant shotgun shells basically. Great for fighting large groups of infected. She couldn’t even imagine the damage such a gun could do against people or things that used to be people.

Behind the gun, the soldier’s eyes scanned all of the surroundings. This convoy was a long way from home. There was no telling how much trouble they had encountered on this trip. Fortunately for Ellie, he was tired and missed any sign of the small girl trembling beneath the cover of the thick shrub just ten feet from the Humvee’s tires as it passed, going east, towards the dogwood trees she and Joel had come from only a little while before.

_If they see me, they’ll scan me. Just like in Boston. I’ll fail the scan and they’ll give me the shot. That needle. That fucking needle._

A long school bus was next, painted black, packed with civilians and the few soldiers tasked with overseeing them. A few of the people were reading or talking, a few looked out of the windows, most just sat quietly, saying nothing. Most of them looked scared, a few of them looked worse, shell-shocked. One old man looked bored.

_They’re on a supply run for their QZ. They’re all the way out here looking for supplies. These poor fuckers drew the short straw. Just like Bonnie._

Behind the bus, a big black army truck rolled along, black smoke spewing from its stacks. Deuce and a half, that’s what Joel called that kind of truck. It was crammed with boxes and barrels. Duffel bags hung off the sides, bulging with even more scrounged goods. This had been a very lucrative run for this team, from the looks of it. Two soldiers rode in the back, sitting on top of drums of fuel or oil, looking very bored and seeing nothing.

Bringing up the rear was a smaller pickup truck, black of course. Several soldiers rode in the back, big, nasty machine guns and flamethrowers in their hands, watching the rear to make sure no one was following them. They were talking. Ellie could hear them. Bullshitting about girls, mostly, giving each other tips about doing it with women that Ellie could have told them was pretty lousy advice, actually. In point of fact most girls didn’t like it if you came on their faces. At best, they put up with it. That’s what she had heard from the older girls at the dorm, and it sounded like the truth to her. She didn’t even know why the hell guys wanted to do such things. Why would you do that to the pretty face of a girl who liked you? Another reason that boys sucked. Most of them, anyway.

_I wonder if Joel likes that kind of stuff? I guess he must. He’s a guy. Ick. Weird._

She grimaced, weighing her options, considering the things she might be willing to do for him.

The convoy rumbled down the road, towards the patch of dogwood trees miles away. She lay there, not moving. She decided that she wouldn’t move. Not until Joel came to get her. She wasn’t taking any chances. Not with that needle hiding somewhere inside one of those trucks. No fucking way.

There was a sound like thunder, but worse. It was the sound of gunfire, a brief storm of it. The convoy had run into the pack of infected that had been chasing the motorcycle earlier. The storm raged somewhere down the road, around the curve of the blacktop, beyond the trees, out of sight. It was brief, fierce. The guns fell silent quickly, their work done. A small group of infected didn’t have a chance against that kind of firepower. The grenade launcher and all those rifles must have ripped them apart in just a few seconds. The convoy probably didn’t even slow down as the soldiers killed those hapless monsters, somewhere on the other side of those trees. They wouldn’t have slowed down for Joel and Ellie either, had they chanced upon them on the highway. It would have been just as quick for the soldiers, just as easy.

_Holy fucking shit! We would’ve run right into them! They would’ve caught us on the open road, with nowhere to hide. They would’ve killed us!_

_Oh thank God I took a few minutes to diddle myself or we’d be so fucking dead right now._

She burst out laughing at the absurdity of it. She balled her fists up and giggled insanely into her clenched fingers, into the crook of her sleeve, into the rich-smelling earth and the old leaves under the bush.

She heard Joel’s heavy boots thudding their way across the blacktop to her.

_Get it together, Ellie. Hurry! Stop laughing, girl! He’ll think you’re crazy!_

“Damned hunter-gatherer team,” he was saying as he knelt down beside the bush he had seen the girl dive into. “Didn’t expect one this far from Cleveland. I was only barely able to get the bike into those trees down there. I guess I managed to get the camo net over her in time. They didn’t see us, thank Christ.”

She felt his big hands on her shuddering shoulders as she pressed her face into the ground, not ready to face him yet.

“Ellie? Hey, kid,” his voice was suddenly gentle, almost fatherly. “Are… are you crying?”

He helped her crawl out from under the bush, keeping a firm grip on her small, quaking shoulders as she sat up, covering her face with the bottom of the helmet.

“Hey, hey. It’s okay. Don’t cry, Ellie,” his voice was so gentle it made her heart sing. “They’re gone. Shhhh. It’s okay. Don’t cry.”

“I’m not…” she said, rocking with the effort of suppressing it all. “I’m laughing!”

And she was. She couldn’t hold it back anymore. She dropped the helmet, tipped back her head. It came rolling out of her in wonderful waves of sweet release.

“What in God’s name are you _laughing_ about?” The tone in his voice said it all.

_Yep. He thinks I’m crazy._

“I realized that the only reason you were able to hear them coming, the only reason we didn’t drive right into them, right into their guns, is all thanks to my –“

_\- uncontrollable teenage horniness -_

“- tiny bladder!” she squeaked out, lying carefully, feeling herself being consumed by a fresh wave of laughter. “So _you’re welcome_ , Joel.”

They were both laughing now. They were still chuckling about it when he muscled the bike back out of the woods a few minutes later. She walked behind him, pushing hard on the bike too but pretty sure she wasn’t actually contributing much to the effort.

“We’re gonna… have to find… another route… to make our way… west,” he was grunting as they slowly shoved the bike through the gently sloping grass towards the blacktop. “We gotta stay… off the interstates… and the highways… for a while… kid.”

“Okay,” she grunted with the effort of shoving the bike the last few feet to the road. Her head was down, both arms up, shoving hard against the rear of the metallic red frame, one slow, trudging step at a time. The earth was too wet from a storm that had passed this way earlier. He was afraid the bike would get bogged down or start to skid. If it went over on soft earth, he might not be able to lever it up again.

“I got this… Ellie… You’re gonna… pull a muscle.”

“I wanna… help,” she wheezed, her jaw set firmly and pressed low against her sternum, her head tucked between her shoulders, elbows locked, pushing as hard as she could.

“Okay, girl. Okay. This is far enough.”

“Thank God.” Head hanging low, back stooped, she dropped her hands to her knees, holding herself up with trembling arms. She gasped for breath. “Fuck me, this bastard is _heavy_.”

He chuckled, and lowered the kickstand. “Hell yeah, it is. Couldn’t have done it without your help, Miss Muscles.”

She nodded, still slumped and breathing hard, her eyes on her shoes, trying to get the smile on her face to come loose from her face without much success.“ Glad to help, Joel.”

“Come on, kiddo. Let’s break out the map.”

“Okay.” She stood up straight, arched her back, gripped her hands behind her neck, and let out a long, slow groan. He wished he didn’t find the sound she made so enticing.

He looked for the old, marked up map they’d taken from the dead woman in Johnstown. He found it, fished it out of his back pack, spread it out on the edge of the pavement, weighing it down with a can of food at each corner – none of them cans of meat, sadly. He crouched there, explaining to her what their options were, what routes seemed the safest now that they knew the military was on the main roads in these parts, what all the little squiggly symbols on the paper meant, the really weird ones that you never noticed before but were suddenly all over the page when you started looking at all the little two-lane roads, the hard to spot narrow gravel rural routes, and the almost impossible to find unpaved country lanes, which was just a fancy way of saying dirt trails. There was just _so much_ to take in.

She knelt close to him, almost under his arm, nodding attentively, trying to focus, trying to take as much of it in as she could manage. She adored him so much when he was patient with her like this. She enjoyed being taught by him. She knelt there, so wonderfully close to him and thought about the things the soldiers in the truck had said. She had made her decision.

_I’d let you do that to me, Joel. It’d be gross, having it on my face like that. But I’d let you do it, I guess. That’s much I want to make you happy. I’d let you do that and a whole lot more too, if that’s what you wanted. I’m pretty sure that’s what someone in love does, right?_

_I love you, Joel._

_Just give me time. Please. Don’t send me away. Let me stay. Until I’m older. Old enough for you, I hope. We’re a great team, you and me. And we could be so much more. I just need a little more time, okay?_

“You keeping up, Red? Do I need to explain any of it again?”

“I think I’ve got it,” she said, and began to recite as much of it as she could back to him, her finger tracing the lines on the map, showing him what she had learned.

He smiled and squeezed her shoulder. His voice was warm and deep.

“I knew you were smart, Ellie.”

She tried as hard as she could not to melt. That was something a girl would do. Ellie wasn’t a girl anymore. She was proving that to him with each passing day.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Masturbation saves the day! I hope that plot twist was handled tastefully. And more hints about what happened with Riley and Ellie between the ending of Left Behind and Ellie’s meeting with Joel and Tess in The Last Of Us have been dropped. One of these days (in volume two), I’ll detail the final day the girls spent together before it ended tragically for them. Until then, I hope these little morsels are keeping everyone in suspense.
> 
> In the game, some of the more interesting things I liked about the tutorial level (the Boston QZ), were the conversations you could eavesdrop on. The people who had just come back from “outside duty” really intrigued me. Those poor, hapless bastards! I had to give Ellie a secondhand connection to something like that, through Riley. More will be revealed about the friendship between Bonnie and Riley, and how that spurred Riley into reaching out to Ellie when the new girl arrived just after Bonnie left. Of course, with only one chapter left in this collection, you’ll have to wait for volume two to read more about that. In the meantime, I’ve established that at least one other QZ is still up and running in my version of this world.
> 
> Cleveland would have a good chance of making it, I think. On the banks of Lake Erie and home a large manufacturing center, this city also has a solid urban farming community. If any city in Ohio would survive the apocalypse, my money is on Cleveland. They also have the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame, so the most important elements of our culture (Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash) would survive as well. I’ve already established that Graceland was bombed into rubble outside of the Memphis QZ, but at least one of Elvis’ sequined jumpsuits survives the outbreak, and I sleep better because of it. I’m not sure I could go on living in a world where at least some part of the king didn’t survive. ;-)
> 
> And for those of you keeping score at home, Bonnie’s little flower was first mentioned back in chapter eight.
> 
> And that does it for the penultimate chapter. Come back on Wednesday for the final installment of volume one, chapter twenty: The Sound Of Rain.


	20. The Sound Of Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is it, the final chapter of Flying To Wyoming – Volume One, an installment in which rain is a recurring theme symbolizing both the pervasive sadness of the ruined world our characters find themselves struggling to survive in, and the potential promise that all of the rot and decay around them might yet be washed away one day, offering the hope that love and possibly civilization itself can rise again after the cleansing deluge has passed. Yep. Subtext and symbolism, that’s why you’re here.
> 
> Also, Ellie gets a spanking.
> 
> Just throwing that in there in case anybody cares about teenaged girls getting spanked. Not that anyone would, of course. Not my readers, I’m sure. You guys are classy as fuck!

**“FLYING TO WYOMING”**   
**Chapter 20 – The Sound of Rain**

 

The kids were splashing in the water. On a spring day this warm, Ellie almost considered joining them herself. She was certainly dressed for it: a pair of old cutoff jeans, her favorite pair of red strappy sandals, and a light cotton tank top – a bit low-cut to show off her boobs, which had finally arrived last year. At seventeen, she was the youngest person trusted to be a nurse in the town infirmary, and she took a justified pride in that. It was an achievement she had earned. It marked her as an adult, forced people to acknowledge her as such.

But on days like this, she still felt very much like a kid.

One of the pretty women watching over the kids waved at her, beckoned her to join them. For just a moment, Ellie seriously considered kicking off her sandals and running down to the water. She wasn’t much of a swimmer, but she was an enthusiastic splasher. She’d had a long, dull day at the town hospital. Nothing much to do today, thank goodness. A sprained wrist (wrapped tight), a minor cut (cleaned out and bandaged up), and one case of being old and cranky (listened politely to the laundry list of aches and pains for a good half hour or so before prescribing a handful of placebo-tastic sugar tablets). All in all, one of the better days she’d had in a while.

“Come on, Ellie! The water’s warm today!”

“Maybe later, Melody. I gotta go home and check in with the Warden first. Maybe she’ll let me out on work release later, okay?”

Melody laughed and returned to the children in her care.

_Man, a swim would feel so good today. Maybe I can talk Riley into coming down here with me before dinner. Assuming it doesn’t rain later._

There were dark gray clouds gathering on the eastern horizon. But maybe they would get lucky and the rain would pass them by. Maybe.

_If it doesn’t rain, maybe later we can go skinny dipping tonight. We haven’t done that since last summer._

Off in the distance, on the paved pathway between the rec center and the dining facility, Ellie saw Linh and Tino walking along, hand in hand. They were getting married in a few weeks and Eillie was going to be a bridesmaid for Linh. She had never done anything like that before and was already feeling a little nervous about it. The couple saw her and raised their free hands in greeting. Ellie waved back happily, a smile on her face so wide that they could see it from all the way over there. Ellie wondered if Linh had told Tino that she was pregnant yet, or if she was still keeping that a secret from him. If she were going to have a baby, Ellie knew she would tell the whole world. Maybe she would one day. Anything was possible, just look at the odds of that couple getting together in the first place. Linh’s family had come from Vietnam, Agostino’s from Ecuador. She imagined their baby was going to be gorgeous.

She continued along the grassy path that ringed the big lake, a noticeable bounce in her step now. The long row of cabins was just ahead. Hers was the third from the end, a cozy little place just big enough for two. She was thinking about just the perfect way to suggest to her roomie that they spend a romantic night in the water together when she heard the drone of the ATV engine coming up behind her.

“Ellie! Hold up!”

It was Winston, trundling along on his old, blue Polaris four-wheeler. She held up a hand in greeting as he pulled to a stop alongside her.

“Hey, Winston. How’s the knee?” His horse had thrown him last autumn. At his age, they both knew his riding days were over.

“Hurts. But that’s nothing new,” he shrugged. “Got something for you.”

“It’s not the flu, is it? Because you gave that to me last year and I don’t want it again.” She smiled when she said it. She and Winston had been friends for years.

Winston laughed gently, a bit sheepishly. He dug through the big canvas duffle bag tied down to the back of his quad bike. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I come into contact with so many outsiders at the front gate. Seems like I get just about everything that goes around. Don’t know why the council doesn’t just keep me isolated from the whole town when I’m not on duty. Especially after last winter.”

Ellie patted his back affectionately. “Nobody blames you, Winston.”

“Bill does.”

“Bill’s an idiot. Nobody who isn’t an idiot blames you for spreading the flu last year. Besides, nobody died. So no harm done, right?”

“Thanks, Ellie,” he said, a smile mostly visible behind his bushy beard. He produced a sturdy cardboard box, large enough for a pair of boots, from the confines of the big bag strapped to the ATV’s cargo rack. “Here. Got this for you.”

“What is it?”

“No idea. Some folk were passing through from St. Louis on their way to Bangor. They did a little trade with the merchants inside the gate. They asked if we had an Ellie Williams here. I said we did. They had a package they’d been paid to deliver to you. Paid very generously, they said.”

“What? Like the post office?” she asked disbelievingly.

_They didn’t just keep it for themselves? Are there still honest people out there?_

“Guess so. Anyhoo, I told them I’d get it to you. And here it is.”

She took the parcel, feeling its not inconsiderable weight. Her name was written on the side in large, black letters. Below that were the words ‘Salt Fork Lake. Ohio.’

She shook it a little. Whatever it was, it wasn’t terribly heavy and it was packed very well.

“I wonder what the hell it is? Who sent it?”

“No idea, Ellie,” Winston shrugged. He settled his hands back on the yoke of the four-wheeler. “Now if you’ll excuse me, nurse Ellie, I gotta get back on patrol.”

“Thanks, Winston,” she said, giving a friendly wave as he drove away. “Give Bill the flu for me!”

“Will do!”

Carrying the mysterious package, Ellie walked the rest of the way to her cabin. She was fishing the house key out of her pocket when she noticed the front door was open to let a breeze through.

She stepped inside and slipped her sandals off just inside the door. She kicked them over to rest by Riley’s big, chunky army boots.

_The story of us is told in our choice of shoes. I feel so girly when I’m with her._

She smiled at the thought. “Honey! I’m home!”

“Back here, girl.” Riley’s voice came from the little common room at the far end of the cabin. Ellie made her way through the small home, feeling the clean hardwood floor beneath her feet. She smiled.

_Cool. Looks like Riley actually cleaned the house for once._

Riley sitting at the small, round table they sometimes used for poker games. Her rifle was in many parts, spread across the surface of the table. The room smelled of solvents and gun oil. The back door was open and a pleasant breeze wafted through. Riley was still wearing her work clothes, but her denim shirt was unbuttoned halfway down, revealing a sumptuous amount of cleavage. Her feet were bare. Ellie considered giving her tired friend a foot rub later. Riley really loved those; it always put her in a good mood – just the right frame of mind to be in should the subject of skinny-dipping just happen to come up later.

“How was work, boo?”

“Wonderfully boring. Tala cut me loose an hour early. And you? How was sentry duty today?”

“Dull as fuck. Nothing ever happens on the west wall. Had to train that new kid, the one from Hartford. Sam. Nice kid, I guess. We walked around in circles, back and forth on that wall, the whole damn shift. My feet are killing me.”

_That settles it. You’re getting a treat soon._

Riley yawned, stretched in a way that Ellie found very fetching, and continued speaking.

“I heard some travelers came through, but they went to the main gate, of course.”

“They did,” said Ellie, setting her package down on the edge of the table, where the tiny pieces of gun weren’t quite as numerous. “And they brought me a gift.”

“A what?” Riley looked at the box, looked up at her friend, not quite believing what she had just heard.

“Seriously. They left this for me. Winston brought it over. Somebody paid them to deliver it to me. So he said, anyway.”

“Wow,” Riley said, leaning forward, intrigued by this unexpected development. “That’s a pretty big package you’ve got there.”

Ellie mimed grabbing the large, invisible penis hanging between her legs. “Thank you for noticing. I try to keep it tucked under, but this bad boy keeps getting loose. He’s got a mind of his own, you know?”

Riley snorted, rolling her eyes. This was just one of the many things Ellie did that made her so endearingly weird. “Yeah. I know. I hope Montego never finds out how much of a ginormous cock you’re packing down there. He’ll get jealous.”

“He should be jealous,” Ellie says with a disdainful sniff. She was not overly fond of Riley’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. “He wishes he was hung like me. That boy can’t satisfy you half as well as I can.”

_And we both know it. I don’t even know what it is you see in him._

Riley smiled, got up, walked around the table to stand behind Ellie, who stood there with baited breath and tried to make it seem as though this wasn’t the moment she’d been waiting for all day.

“He _is_ jealous, Ellie,” Riley purred into her ear. Ellie felt herself begin to turn to soft putty. “He thinks there’s something between us. He asks about it _all the time_. He wants to know if we’re lesbians. He wants to know if he can _watch_.”

_Hmmm. I might let myself be talked into that. Maybe…But all I’d let him do is watch. Probably…_

“And what do you tell him?” Ellie murmured, leaning back just a bit, wanting Riley to touch her.

_I’m right here, Riley. Come on. Touch me._

“I tell him,” Riley began, her hands sliding up Ellie’s flanks, along her ribs, tickling her, “that he’s got a dirty mind, and that two smoking hot girls like us can live together and not be lesboes, and that he needs to stop thinking about you and me, all naked and sweaty, doing hot lezzie stuff all the time.”

“Lezzie stuff?” Ellie giggled.

“You know. Having sexy pillow fights. Walking around inside all day with no clothes on during the summer. Taking long, hot baths together during the winter. Shaving each other’s legs. Painting our nails. Sleeping in the same bed when it’s cold or when it rains or when you have a bad dream. Man, I tell him about all the stuff we get up to.”

“Go on,” Ellie cooed, loving the feeling of Riley’s hands on her body, loving the story Riley was weaving together for her. “What else do we do that I should know about?”

“You, letting me slap your giant tits around and begging me to run my fingers through that big red bush of yours. Me, spanking your ass and letting you suck my smaller but clearly superior tits at bedtime because it helps you sleep. Biting your nipples, scratching my nails down your back, pulling your hair, and making you eat my pussy every night like candy’s gonna come shooting out of there. I’ve told him _everything_ , boo.”

“He’s never gonna stop thinking about it if you keep talking about it like _that_ ,” Ellie teased. Already she could feel herself becoming warm and tingly. Foreplay would not be necessary tonight. “And you did promise me candy, Riley. I keep looking for it and it’s never in there.”

“One of these nights it will be.”

Ellie sighed dramatically, luxuriating in the feel of Riley’s hands on her, warm and strong against her ribs, just under her armpits, so tantalizingly close to her breasts. Riley’s breath was hot and wonderful on her neck. “Fine. I’ll just have to keep looking then.”

“Yes, you will. And my pussy is so sweet, it’s practically dessert and _you know it_.” Riley giggled. So did Ellie. “And I also tell him that he needs to stop staring at your gigantic tits _every damn time_ he’s over here.”

“Really? He’s been looking at my boobs?” Ellie hadn’t noticed. She tried to be polite to Montego, but mostly avoided him when she could.

“Mmm hmmm,” Riley whispered, her hands inching forward to cup Ellie’s large breasts. She lifted them, feeling the weight of each one in her hands. She squeezed them. “I catch him looking at them… all… the… time.”

Ellie moaned softly. She would be happy to let Riley to keep doing that all day. “No shit?”

“No shit,” Riley giggled, slipping her hands inside Ellie’s shirt, gently kneading her breasts, running a long finger across each nipple, covered by the soft fabric of Ellie’s bra. “Fuck, girl. How could he not? These things are _huge_. Shit, I remember when I was the one in this relationship with the big boobs. Then somebody in this house just had to hit a growth spurt when she turned sixteen. She just had to be a showoff about it.”

“They’re not _that_ big,” Ellie groaned, leaning back into her older friend just a bit. Riley was doing some amazing things to them and it was making it hard to think clearly. “They’re fucking C-cups. They just look so big because I’m so short. I wish I was tall like you.”

_Don’t be jealous of my big knockers, Riley. It’s just karma for all those years you teased me about being flat as a board._

“Don’t try to get technical and shit,” Riley said, nuzzling Ellie’s neck. Ellie felt her toes curling against the hard floor. “Don’t pretend you don’t know how sweet and suckable these things look. Why else do you have so many low-cut tops in your closet these days?”

Ellie laughed, luxuriating in the feeling of Riley lips on her neck, the warmth of their bodies pressed together. Riley hands found the edges of Ellie’s bra and gently eased the frilly, lacy edges of each cup down, exposing more of Ellie’s breasts. The sensation of her older friend’s fingers on her bare flesh, tracing small circles around her hard nipples was incredible. She squirmed and moaned in Riley’s arms in a way that her older friend found to be almost unbearably erotic. The softly sighing redhead was glad she had worn her thinnest, unlined bra today. She knew how much Riley was fascinated by her new boobs – Montego wasn’t the only person staring at them lately. Ellie had picked it out hoping something like this would happen when she finally got her older friend alone. The extra jiggle had been a small price to pay. Plus she had drawn some nice looks from the guys around town. Not that she cared, really. But sometimes it was nice to be noticed. And more importantly, she had made herself irresistible to Riley this evening. Montego could just stay home and jack off for all she cared. She needed Riley tonight.

_Maybe if he comes by later, I really will let him watch us. But I’ll have to find a way to get you to make me do it, Riley. You’ll have to think it’s your idea. I’d be too embarrassed otherwise._

“You know I’m right, you little show-off,” Riley said huskily, her tongue sliding along the edge of Ellie’s ear. “You wanted everyone in town to see these big things bouncing around in that skimpy top. Didn’t you, girl?”

“Busted.” Ellie whispered breathlessly.

“Busty,” Riley corrected.

They giggled. If only Montego could see them now.

_Maybe he will… That’s up to you, Riley. I’ll do whatever you tell me to do._

“So…” Riley husked, “you gonna do something with that package or not, boo?”

“My _package_? God! I swear, Riley. You just love me for my big dick. You don’t even see me as a _person_ , do you?” Humor was all she had left at the moment. She was melting into Riley, ready to be whatever her friend needed her to be tonight.

“You know how I love the big ones.” Riley laughed and let her arms slip away from Ellie, who hated to feel them go. She slapped Ellie’s ass playfully and the younger girl squeaked in surprise and joy. “Now come on. Let’s see what’s in there.”

_That better not be the only spanking I get tonight, Riley._

Ellie sighed, a little sad that the moment with Riley hadn’t lasted longer, gone farther. She held her hand out to Riley, who had slid around to stand beside her.

“Can I have my switchblade for a minute, Miss Riley?” She hadn’t used that title since their days at the Prep School, back when Riley made her beg to enter their dorm room every evening after class. It felt right to use it again tonight.

_Make me beg, Riley. Please. I need that tonight. I don’t know why. I just do._

“ _My_ switchblade, you mean,” Riley said, grinning fiercely. She reached into her pocket for it. “You lost it to me fair and square, _new girl_.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know,” Ellie said, smiling at the old nickname, but still feeling no small amount of regret over losing her knife to Riley. “I should have never bet Mom’s knife. But I thought for sure I had you with three kings.”

“Four deuces said otherwise,” Riley said haughtily, handing the blade over. “But don’t worry, boo. You can still get this back from me. One day. _Maybe_.”

“You’re going to let me win it back?” Ellie asked hopefully. She unlocked the safety, pushed the button. The blade snapped out. She had missed the feeling of it in her hand.

“ _Let you_? Hell no,” Riley said, her hand drifting down to Ellie’s backside. “But I might let you _earn_ it back.”

“Earn it how?” Ellie grinned, her eyes half-closed now. Her lips parted. Sudden anticipation had made her throat dry.

_I’ll do anything you want. You know that, Riley. Just name it. Go crazy. Test me._

“Oh, I’ve got a few ideas, girl.”

Riley swatted Ellie’s ass. Hard. Not playful at all.

Ellie sucked in air, hissing through clenched teeth. She shivered with painful delight.

_Awesome! She’s in the mood to be rough. Oh thank you, God._

“Mostly, I think I’m just gonna slap it out of your sweet little ass, one smack at a time” Riley said, easing close to Ellie, pressing their hips together, taking the blade from her with one hand, rubbing her friend’s tender ass cheek with the other. Riley wanted to be in charge tonight, and Ellie thrilled at the notion of it. “But first, let’s find out what’s in this box, okay? I’ve got the rest of the night to abuse your fine ass.”

_Why wait?_

“Sure thing.” Ellie’s voice was husky, needy. Riley loved the sound of it.

_Fuck, that felt good. Hurt in just the right way._

As subtly as she could manage, Ellie squeezed her thighs together to relieve some of the pressure that she could feel building inside her. Riley noticed but pretended not to. She wanted to give that tempting round bottom another swat, but there would be plenty of time later to get rough with Ellie. She knew just the way her young friend liked it. Riley knew how waiting made things like that even sweeter, both for her and for Ellie. Her friend always wanted to rush right into the action, lacking the patience to let the heat simmer for a while, let herself enjoy how it felt to let the pressure build up. But, like most nights, Riley was the one guiding things between them tonight. And Riley had so much more patience than Ellie ever would. She knew Ellie would thank her for taking her time once it was all done and they were snuggled together under the sheets.

Riley sliced through the old duct tape holding the end of the package together. This really was a good knife. She’d had it for almost a week now and knew that it was killing Ellie to be parted from it. She closed it up and slid it back into her pocket. Ellie’s eyes followed it every inch of the way. Riley smiled knowingly. She patted the denim bulge that concealed it and winked at her friend.

Ellie could start buying it back from her tonight in installment payments. And ass was the only currency Riley Abel was going to accept for a family heirloom like Anna William’s knife.

“Okay, Ellie. Stick your hand in the box. Go on. See what kind of weird shit some crazy fool sent you.”

Ellie reached out for the package, just a little nervously. There could be anything in there.

“Man,” Riley said, her voice shrill, scared, theatrically worried. “I sure hope there’s no _scorpions_ in there!”

Ellie pulled her hand back quickly. “Gah! Damn you, Riley!”

Riley cackled. Ellie had never seen a scorpion in her life but her terror of them was something Riley had known about since their days in the dorms together, back when all either of them knew of the outside world was what they saw in Ellie’s picture books, back before they had finally escaped the Boston QZ and made their way to Ohio three years ago, when Ellie had been just fourteen. That night Riley had come back to Ellie, had abandoned her promises to the Fireflies, broken her oath to Marlene. All for Ellie. All because of two words from the only person in the whole world who really gave a damn about her. Two simple words.

Don’t go.

That’s all it took. A whole lifetime of dreams and plans, gone in an instant. And good riddance. They had fled the city with the help of a smuggler Riley had met through Marlene weeks before. A woman named Tess. It had cost Riley all of the whiskey and cigarettes she had been squirreling away to bribe Winston and the few friendly guards she was on good terms with. Tess had taken them outside the city through a secret tunnel. She had provided them with an old, folding road map of the nearby states with a path clearly marked to a secret settlement that Tess had heard about. She gave the girls two canteens, a small canvas bag of canned food, a single sleeping bag, and wished them well. After that, Riley and Ellie were on their own.

Somehow, they made it all the way here together without being murdered, raped, eaten, or bitten. It was an honest-to-god _miracle_ and they both knew it. However, Riley left the Sunday morning church crap to Ellie, who seemed to get something out of all the singing and the praying and the rejoicing and shit. Most days, anyway. Riley and God still weren’t square after He had decided, in His infinite wisdom, to make her an orphan by forcing her to kill her own father. The father she loved so much. The father who was trying so hard for his daughter and his wife, trying to be a good man in a bad world. The father who had become infected by a goddamn careless, coughing, hacking straggler that sneaked into the city with forged papers and stood next to him in the ration line one fine, freezing cold February morning in Boston and sprayed bloody phlegm across the shaving cut on his face when the stranger turned his head to sneeze. The father that had brutally killed her terrified mother, right in front of his loving daughter’s eyes. The father who had died by her hand. Died by a kitchen knife. Died raving and thrashing, leaving his blood all over her. Died while she screamed his name, begging him to stop, begging him to forgive her for being so small and so scared and so pathetically not ready to die with her family at the age of twelve. The father she couldn’t bring back, the mother ripped open, unable to stand, only able to bleed out and die with a rattling, gurgling whimper in front of the old couch with the hole in the armrest, the one little Riley’s cat had scratched out, back before rations got tight and her dad had taken Buttons the kitty somewhere he wouldn’t talk about and then came back without it, making them a slightly less happy family. A family she couldn’t fix, couldn’t bring back to life, no matter how many tears she cried. A family the FEDRA men zipped up in white biohazard bags while a middle-aged, fat woman who tried very hard to act as if she cared checked her for infection, cleaned her up, put her in a disposable plastic smock, led her out of her house and drove her across the city to the military preparatory school, where she was enrolled half a semester early, not as a student yet because she was too young, but as someone who would do shitty work details every damn day until she finally was old enough to begin classes because she was turning thirteen pretty soon and _they_ could bend the rules but not her, dumping her off in a place where nobody but dorky, loveable little Ellie would ever really care about her. Just the way God intended, apparently.

No, God and Riley weren’t exactly on speaking terms yet. He’d brought Ellie into her life, sure, and maybe He helped a little getting them here safely, not letting anybody rape or kill them, not letting them get bitten. But it wasn’t enough to make up for what He’d done to her when she was twelve. Not even fucking close.

“That package isn’t going to unpack itself. Want me to do it for you, boo?” Riley teased, her hand rubbing slow, small circles across Ellie’s tingling bottom.

“No… I’ll do it…” Ellie was trying to push the imaginary scorpions to the very bottom of the box with the power of her mind.

_I know you’re not real, you little shits. So just keep staying not real, okay?_

With a deep breath, Ellie slipped her hand slipped inside, felt around, tried not to think about the deadly sting that was bound to happen at any moment. Her questing fingers found lots of styrofoam packing peanuts… more peanuts… then a cold, hard something… and another one just like it… She pulled them out. Riley took one of them from her hands.

“Who the hell would send you booze?” Riley asked, studying the small glass bottles, genuinely puzzled at this discovery.

“Bartles and Jaymes flavored malt alcohol cooler,” Ellie read aloud, her voice soft and warm, filled with memories. “Hawaiian Apple Passion.”

_I tasted like this when he kissed me. The house we were staying in had a case of these things in the basement. They were nice and cool. His lips were rough and warm._

“Still not answering my question, Ellie,” Riley said, jealousy and suspicion edging into her formerly playful voice. She nudged Ellie in the ribs lightly.

“I’m not sure,” Ellie said softly, smiling shyly. She was lying. They both knew it.

_The memories are so strong, so clear. His arms around me. His beard coarse against my face. I was so scared but I didn’t want him to stop. It was my first kiss with someone other than Riley. My first kiss from a man._

“Uh huh.” Riley knew Ellie well enough to know when she was lying. “What else is in here?”

_Naked. Both of us. Looking up at him, my legs open, my stomach full of butterflies, my hands feeling those hard muscles under his sweaty skin, feeling him easing his way inside me, slowly. It was incredible._

“I’ll get it –“ Ellie began, but Riley wasn’t in the mood to wait any longer. “Wait! No!”

Impatiently, Riley was tipping the box over, spilling the old white styrofoam pellets everywhere. They rolled along in a tiny avalanche, covering the many small parts of her disassembled rifle. She didn’t care. She had to get to the bottom of this. It was one thing for her to juggle Ellie and Montego, but it was altogether a different thing for Ellie to have a secret admirer of her own. One of them ought to keep things simple in this cabin.

“Riley! Careful!”

Two more bottles of the same stuff rolled across the table. A full box of .32 ACP ammo raced out, landing on the table with a heavy thump. A hardcover book slid out right behind it. Riley picked it up.

“'The Art of Savage Starlight,'” Riley read, her eyes cutting over to a clearly embarrassed Ellie. “'Concept art, behind the scene development designs, and rare production stills from the official animated motion picture.'”

_Oh my God. He remembered. We saw the ad for it on the side of the road. We talked about it, that night in the house, before the sun went down. Before we made love for the first time. For some stupid reason, I told him about the comic book series I loved so much. He must have thought I was such a dumb kid. Why did I tell him that?_

She smiled. To Riley, it was warmer and brighter than the sun over the lake.

_He remembered._

Ellie shuffled her feet, trying to look anywhere but at Riley or the table covered in gifts for her. Her cheeks blazed red.

_The next morning in that field beside the barn, where he taught me how to shoot that rifle. His lips. His tongue. His big fingers. His ticklish beard. All between my open thighs as I lay there, looking up at the clouds. He did it differently that Riley does. A little rougher. More insistent. But it was still good. So very good._

“'Coming soon to theaters everywhere this summer.'” Riley said, barely even looking at the book now. “What the fuck is this about, Ellie?”

“Ummm…” Ellie felt flush, warmed by old memories she had tried to hide for too long. “I’m… not sure?”

_I tried to get all of him in my mouth… but I just couldn’t. He didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t rush. Didn’t pressure me. He needed it so badly, but he let me take my time. I tried my best. It seemed to be good enough. I know I got better at it every day. He always praised me. I wanted to please him like he pleased me. I think I did. I know I did._

“Are you asking me? Or telling me?” Riley teased. She was jealous, sure, but Ellie was so fucking adorably befuddled at this moment. This clearly wasn’t something the younger woman had expected to happen. Neither of them had, really. It was a wonderful moment of utter unpredictability in the otherwise perfectly routine daily schedule that they had both settled into a few years ago.

“Ummm…”

_On top of him, being filled by him, my hands on his hard stomach, my thighs pressed against his, riding him. Hard. Fast. The sound of my ass slapping against him. His hands on my breasts. God, the crazy sounds I was making. He cried out my name…_

“Oh hey! Look! There’s a note!”

“Gimme!” Ellie’s voice was desperate, terrified.

“Not so fast!” Riley held it away from Ellie, waving it around playfully. Her younger friend may have filled out more than she had, but she was still the taller of the two by a good three or four inches. “I’d better read it. There might be scorpion eggs in there!”

“Goddammit, Riley! _Give me that letter!_ ” The power in Ellie’s voice shocked them both.

Riley blinked in surprise. Her mouth fell open slightly from shock.

“Sorry,” Ellie offered weakly a moment later. “Just… give it to me… _please_.”

Riley considered what was a stake. This was clearly very important to Ellie. Important enough to yell at her best friend like that. Some battles were best avoided altogether. She handed the letter over magnanimously.

“Here you go, girl.” Riley cooed. She even managed to wink playfully when she said it.

Ellie unfolded the letter with eager fingers, holding it in such a way that Riley couldn’t see the words. Her lovely green eyes darted back and forth, reading the letter. Reading it again. Reading it once more, but only certain passages this time.

_Camping at the end of our fifth day on the trail together. The sun was still up. The smell of the warm grass against my cheek. My ass up in the air. I was so embarrassed. No one had ever seen me like that. Nothing left to hide. Nothing left to the imagination. All my private parts out there on display for him to look at. And he did. There I was. This was me, out here in broad daylight. Take a good look. The soft clover tickled my small breasts as my body rocked back and forth to the rhythm he made. A cool breeze on my hot skin. His strong hands on my ripening hips. One reaching around… underneath… to rub my…_

She smiled. She sighed. She couldn’t help herself.

_I wasn’t embarrassed to show myself to him. Not anymore, not after that evening. Fuck, I wanted him to see me, all of me. I loved how he looked at me, the sensation of his hungry eyes on my body. I remember sitting in that barn, on top of that old piece of farm equipment, it was painted green, the color of grass, with a big yellow deer on the side, I was perched there, my legs wide apart, my heels resting on the edge of the machine that was so cold under my ass that I’d decided to squat on the damn thing instead. He didn’t care. Said it made it easier to get to all of me. And, damn, he meant all of me. Front and back. He put that magic tongue of his everywhere. The evening was cooling off, I had a few traces of his come drying slowly on my tits, the few little streaks that he’d missed when he cleaned me off with that rag. I’d let him come in my mouth when we were out in the field, when I’d had my ass up in the air for him. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that in my mouth, but he was still excited that I’d let him. It had made him happy that I would do that for him. I loved making him happy. It wasn’t really all that bad, actually, and after a while I kind of began to enjoy it too. I liked how powerful it made me feel, having him in my mouth like that, feeling how much he needed me at that moment._

_I was holding myself open for him, bracing myself with my free hand, watching him look at me, feeling his warm breath on my pussy as he brought his lips closer. We had just fucked for the second time that evening and I was still burning for him, needing him. He said he didn’t have anything else left in him. All we’d done for the last few days was walk just enough each day to say that we’d made some progress and then we’d rush off to find a place to make camp so we could spend the rest of the day fucking each other silly. He said that I’d worn him out, that he was spent, that he just couldn’t get it up anymore. It made me feel like the most powerful woman in the world to hear him admit that he couldn’t keep up with me, with my desires. But I was still so horny, I still wanted him so much, I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t find the words, didn’t want him to think I was a slut or something. But I didn’t have to say anything. I shouldn’t have worried. He could see how much I needed him, how my body still craved his touch. He was so generous. His lips were so soft. I was so fucking wet…_

Ellie looked up at Riley, who was studying her intently. Ellie was suddenly no longer in the barn; she was back in the little cabin on the edge of the lake again. The younger girl turned several shades of red.

“So…?” Riley was trying very hard to be patient.

“You… um…” Ellie folded the letter, tucked the paper into her pocket, tried to find the words. “You remember last summer, when we snuck back to Boston? To get Melody and her kid and as many of the others we could and smuggled them back here?”

Of course Riley remembered. She still had nightmares about it. On the way back, they had run into a group of crazies. The group had been scattered. Several of them had been lost or killed. Riley and Ellie had been separated. Riley had been heartbroken. If there hadn’t been so many young moms and babies in the group, she would have never left the forest. She would have never stopped looking for Ellie. She would have died there, if that were what it took. She would have never given up hope. Never given up on Ellie.

But she had. As much as she loved Ellie, she had to get the most vulnerable members of the group someplace safe. She had to get them to the safety of Salt Fork Lodge. Moving as slowly as they did, skirting around the burning ruins of Pittsburgh, it took six more days to get them safely here, to their new homes. She cried the whole way. By the time she had finally reached the gate, she had no more tears left. Riley took Winston’s automatic rifle and all the ammo she could carry, ready to go back and find her best friend. Cheryl Jackson had forbidden her to leave, told her that they couldn’t risk losing one of their best snipers on a suicide mission to find a girl who was probably already dead. Cheryl wasn’t the oldest, but she was the most experienced. Her word here was final. She had come a long way from the girl who was content to work kitchen detail every night in the mess hall. She would remain in charge of this place until Tess joined them that winter, when Boston finally began to fall apart.

That night Riley had snuck out anyway. Winston, good man that he was, made a big show of looking the other way while she crept out through the gate.

Two days later, she found Ellie on the trail, happy, clean, and well fed. And in the company of an older man. Big guy, good looking, confident, full of muscles, swagger, and secrets. He had parted company with them the day they reached the town gates. Ellie had seemed sad to see him go. But, despite numerous proddings from Riley, she had always insisted that nothing had happened between her and the older man. Nothing. Not once in the entire week that they had been together before Riley chanced upon them. Not once. Ellie swore it. He had never laid a hand on her. Promise. Hand to God. Pinky swear.

Smoldering, dark brown eyes studied worried, creamy green ones.

“You. _Fucked_. Him.” Riley said, pissed off and incredibly pleased with her friend all at the same time. Her face was a mask of disbelief. Her eyes angry. Her mouth wide with delight.

“Umm…” Ellie stared hard at her own feet. Her face had never been redder.

_Sixty-nining. That’s what he had called it. That morning, just a few hours before we ran into Riley. Our last time together. I was so short; it was hard to make it work. But we sure found a way. His beard was wet and matted from my pussy. My mouth was slick with his come. He kissed me, we tasted each other. Yeah, we made it work. Didn’t we, Joel?_

“You little _bitch!_ ” Riley said, trying not to smile but failing. A broad grin split her face. “Good job, girl!”

“Yeah?” Ellie didn’t know what to feel. There were so many emotions competing for attention. She decided that relief was probably her best bet. Regret could come later, when their passion for each other was spent later that night. Joy that he had remembered her after all this time would come even later, once Riley was asleep.

          Ellie,

          I’m in Jackson, Wyoming. Thinking of you all the time. If you  
          ever make it out here, I’d love to see you again. I miss you  
          so much it hurts. My brother would love to meet you some day.

          Love,  
          Joel

That’s all the note had said. But it was enough. He was a man of few words. Ellie tried not to think about the letter. Tried not to think about what she might do if she thought about it too much. Tried not to think about how many miles lay between Ohio and Wyoming. Could the distance be covered in a summer? Probably. But it would be too dangerous to go alone.

_Would you come with me, Riley? I’ve put up with you and Montego and the noises that come out of your room when he spends the night here. Would you do the same for me? Or would you let Joel share our bed some nights? We could make that work. I’m sure of it._

Riley watched her thinking; saw that her friend was awash in old memories. She wanted to thump her, yell at her for lying about it all this time. She wanted to know all about it. Why him? Why did she choose him? Of all the men who had shown interest in her, what was it about him that had caused Ellie to finally leave the self-imposed ‘girl’s only club’ that she insisted that she belonged to. What was so special about him? Why had she kept it a secret? Had he been good to her? He must have. Right? She clearly missed him. Did she love him too? She knew Ellie. She knew that Ellie couldn’t _not_ love him. This redheaded girl was filled with love. Packed to the gills with the sappy stuff, really. If she’d let herself be with this man, there had to be love for him in her heart.

Riley knew with absolute certainty that Ellie loved her. And that she loved this man too.

Riley was torn by love and jealousy and pride for Ellie. She had to decided how to handle this. Had to make a decision and live with it. Ellie had loved her when no one else would. Ellie had stuck by her when every other person had run for cover. Ellie had forgiven her for the terrible words she’d said to her on the night she’d run off to join the Fireflies. Ellie had so easily unburdened her of the unbearable weight of the guilt and shame she’d felt for leaving Ellie behind to save Melody and the children. Ellie had _always_ been there for her. Ellie always would be.

Riley hugged her, surprising the younger woman. Riley would focus only on the positive tonight. Tomorrow was tomorrow. This was now. Every now and then, now was all you could hang on to. And in a crazy moment like this, Riley felt sure that now was the only thing that could possibly matter.

“Girl,” she whispered in Ellie’s ear, “you are so fucking _awesome_ sometimes.”

“I am?” Ellie asked, happy to be hugged, happier still to return the embrace. “You’re not mad?”

“Of course I’m mad. Don’t be stupid,” Riley laughed. “I’m gonna spank your ass _so hard_ tonight. That’s what you get for lying to me for a whole year. But I gotta admit, I’m impressed with you, Ellie.”

“I thought… you wouldn’t understand.” Ellie said very softly, fumbling for words that seemed determined to stay hidden from her. “I was kind of ashamed... for what I’d done… while you were off with the group… I didn’t know were I was. Didn’t know how to get home… Two days lost and alone… And then… he found me. Huddled inside a rusty old van… no bullets left in my gun… I was sure he was going to rape me or kill me or something… but he took care of me. Brought me back to you… After he left, I remember how you held me that night… how happy I was to be with you again… and I was so fucking ashamed of what I’d done.”

Riley held her at arm’s length, studying her embarrassed friend, almost seeing her for the first time. Be here now, she told herself. Tomorrow is tomorrow. She teased Ellie as playfully as she could manage. “Ashamed? Why? Was the sex bad?”

“No.” Shyly.

“Was it _good_?”

“Yeah. Very.” Even more shyly.

_He always made sure I was ready for him. He never rushed me. I was so nervous. Especially the first time. But he always took good care of me. Always._

“Then you’ve got nothing to be ashamed about. Hell, if anything, he should be ashamed. You were a delicate, fifteen-year-old virgin. He was old enough to know better.”

“Sixteen. And he was old enough to know what he was doing. I can tell you that for a fact!” Her face was tipped down, but her eyes looked up at Riley through dark red lashes. She couldn’t stop blushing. She couldn’t stop grinning.

_He always made sure I came too. Just like you, Riley. Not selfish like you say Montego is sometimes. God, I think you might like Joel if you gave him half a chance. I’d hate to share him with another woman, but I’d do it for you…For us…I’d try. I promise._

Riley smiled deviously. She was so fucking proud of Ellie at this moment. Deception or not, this was a milestone. Ellie had been a grownup for a while, sure. But this cemented it in Riley’s mind. If Ellie was old enough to keep secrets like this one, then Ellie wasn’t a girl anymore.

“You’re gonna have to give me _all_ the details, okay?” Riley whispered seductively.

“Okay.”

“But first, we’re gonna get drunk.” She held up one of the coolers. “Mind sharing these with me?”

“Sure. Glad to.”

“Okay. So here’s what we’re gonna do,“ Riley unscrewed the cap, held the bottle to Ellie’s eager lips, let her take a long pull from it. “We’re gonna drink a little… then I’m going to take you to the bedroom…”

“Like where this is going so far,” Ellie purred, the alcohol warm in her throat.

Riley took a swig from the bottle. “Damn, that’s really good.”

“I know, right?” Riley let Ellie have another sip.

“Then I’m going to blindfold you…”

_Fuck yes, you are, Riley._

“Oooh!” Ellie’s tongue slipped out to lick the alcohol from her lips.

“Then I’m going to tie you to the bed…”

“Go on…” Ellie tucked her bottom lip between her teeth.

_Why the fuck are we still talking? Look at me! I’m ready! Take me to bed, damn it!_

“And I’m going to sit on your face, and make you... lick… my… dripping… wet…” Riley began. She let the words hang there between them. Ellie leaned forward in anticipation. Riley took a sip from the bottle to drag the moment out as long as she could.

_Say it. Tell me I have to do it. I want to, but I want you to make me do it even more!_

Riley smiled evilly and changed gears. She finished off the bottle with three big chugs. “Actually, you know what? That can wait. First I’m going to pull those sexy little cutoffs down around your ankles, bend you over this table… And…”

“And…?” Ellie’s hands slid up to Riley’s shoulders. She couldn’t wait to get started.

_Spank me. Spank my ass, Riley._

“And I’m going to smack the hell out of your fine little ass for lying to me all this time.”

_Fuck yes!_

“I deserve that,” Ellie said earnestly, nodding her head penitently, trying to sound sincere, trying very hard not to smile with delight. “I really do. So you just go ahead and do what you have to do, Riley. I’ve been very, very bad and I totally have it coming.”

Riley wanted to laugh but was afraid it would change the seductive mood she was working so hard to create.

“Now exactly how this is going to play out is up to you, boo.” Riley tried to be deadly serious. “You’re either gonna get it with my hand… or my big… _leather_ … _belt_.”

Ellie shivered, enraptured by Riley’s words. A spike of pleasure shot through her.

_Oh, God. I almost came. Just from the words._

“So you’d better answer my question,” Riley continued, her eyes searching Ellie’s face, seeing how wide her green eyes were now, how her pupils dilated, how her freckled face was flushed a charming pink. “You were with that man for more than _six days_ …”

“Ummm.” Ellie hummed. Both her lips were pulled into her mouth now, held gently between her teeth. She was nervous about where Riley was going with this. She held on to Riley’s shoulders more tightly.

“Now I’m going to assume from the moony-eyed way you were looking at him as we walked all the way back here, that you gave it up quick and that you were letting him fuck you pretty much every night.”

_I was fucking him every day too._

“You… could… assume that…” Ellie said mischievously, her eyes shimmering. Her mouth was slightly open. Riley could see her pink tongue teasing the edge of her teeth. This girl needed to be kissed and soon. They both knew it.

“So the question is… and keep in mind, the fate of your naughty little ass depends on your answer…”

Ellie held her breath.

_Be rough, Riley. Don’t hold back. I want you to hurt me. Just a little._

“In the year that we’ve been together since,” Riley said, leaning close, their mouths close enough to feel the damp heat of their breath. “When we were… in bed… Did you ever think about _him_ … while we were doing it?”

_More than once. Sometimes I pretended you were him. Sometimes I pretended you and he were both in bed with me at the same time. I know that’s fucked up, but I couldn’t help myself._

“Just… so we’re clear… you’re going to beat the hell out of my bare ass, either way… right?” Ellie said hesitantly, adorably. Riley could feel Ellie’s hot breath on her cheek.

“Yep. Either way, boo. Belt or hand. You’re getting one of them tonight. Count on it.”

“And if I don’t answer the question, I’m getting the belt for certain, right?” Ellie was trembling slightly. Riley could feel her body quivering. Ellie’s shallow, excited breaths were coming faster.

“Oh, you better believe it, girl.” Riley brushed her lips against Ellie’s, but pulled back quickly, taunting, denying her friend the kiss she so eagerly sought. The younger girl’s yearning lips found only empty air and she whimpered deliciously. Riley took one of Ellie’s hands and slid it down to feel the thick leather belt around her waist. Her gunbelt. “Little girl, I will paddle the _ever-loving fuck_ out of your lily white ass cheeks with this belt until they are so red you won’t be able to sit down for a fucking week if you don’t tell me _the truth_. Right. Fucking. _Now_.”

Ellie gulped audibly. Her hand resting on the belt shook noticeably in Riley’s strong grasp.

“So what’s it gonna be, Ellie? Have you been thinking about him when we do it?”

Her answer was a whisper so soft that Riley was only barely able to hear it, even cheek to cheek as they were.

“I think I’m gonna just keep my damn mouth shut about that, Miss Riley.”

Ellie tried to giggle but Riley cut her off with a deep, hard kiss born of pure desire. Ellie felt her denim cutoffs being tugged roughly down. Riley’s thumbs were hooked inside the waistband of her panties too. They were both being pulled down at the same time. The evening breeze was cool and invigorating on her exposed flesh. She watched Riley pull the leather belt free of the loops on her jeans.

_Oh, fuck. This is going to be intense. She’s really going to hurt me._

Wordlessly, Riley turned her around with strong, forceful movements, placed her young friend’s small hands on the edge of the table. Ellie whimpered, stepped out of her clothing, naked below the waist now. Riley placed her toes between Ellie’s feet, sliding against them, nudging, forcing, making Ellie slide her legs apart, wider, then wider still, a small strong hand pushing against her shoulders, forcing her to bend forward slightly, arching her back, compelling her to thrust her ass out, exposing more of herself to the punishment she was about to receive, punishment she deserved.

_I’m going to pay for this tomorrow. And I don’t even care._

Riley raised the looped belt over her shoulder. Ellie groaned, trembled, held onto the table edge with nervous hands, already anticipating the first cruel blow. Miss Riley’s hand took a firm grip on Ellie’s small shoulder, steadying her. Ellie closed her eyes. Her mouth was open, groaning. She shivered slightly, and not from the cool breeze. She was ready.

Outside their cozy little cabin, rain began to fall.

The rain is loud against the cracked and broken windows of her shitty little apartment in Boston. She lies huddled inside a closet, wrapped in a tattered, moth-eaten blanket, the cracked and mildewed closet door shut tight to trap what little heat she can generate inside with her. She has slept fitfully all night, cold and damp, miserable. Even curled into the smallest ball she can make of herself, she still cannot keep warm. There is no place for her in Boston. Riley left months ago to join the Fireflies and never returned. Word is that she is somewhere in Ohio. The Cleveland QZ, maybe.

Without Riley, Ellie struggled at the Military Preparatory School. She never really had any friends. She is too much of an oddball to fit in, with her love of comics and science fiction and old magazines and bad jokes. She tried so hard, but she just couldn’t make it without Riley. Riley was her buffer, the one who understood her, the one who let her tag along when they hung out in the dayroom with the other upperclassmen students. Riley was the cool big sister who encouraged her young friend to keep pushing hard, to not give up when the dormitories competed against each other on outdoor games days. It was Riley who was always happy to be paired up with the young girl in tug-of-war or relay sprints or volleyball. Riley who challenged her to rush the net, jump as high as her legs would allow, spike the ball, bury those cheap freshman whores from dorm T-3. Riley who carried her around the sand on her shoulders, letting her whoop and cheer at their narrow victory. Riley who showed the other girls in their dorm just how much heart this goofy little freshman had. They had all clapped for her that day.

Riley helped her to fit in.

Riley who held her that freezing cold Christmas Eve night, when the heating went out. Riley who lay there, pressed close against Ellie underneath their thin blankets and talked to her of the future they could have together, somewhere, someday, if they could just get away from this place. Riley who held her so close, made her feel so safe, so special. Riley, whose breath warmed the back of her neck so wonderfully while they slept together, happy and toasty warm in the freezing dorm room. Riley who had given in to their shared need and made love to her under those blankets as the sun began to set, not ashamed, not afraid to hold back, not guilty about it afterward. Snow had gathered on the windowsill while they kissed, each tasting the other’s sex on their tongues without any regrets.

Riley loved her.

Riley who told her she never wanted to see her again. Who told her she was a dumb little fucking retarded cunt that no one liked and no one was ever going to love. Told her that she only put up with her ignorant ass for as long as she did because the dorm supervisors asked her to, since there wasn’t room for this stupid little freshman misfit with the other first year students downstairs and obviously none of the other dorms wanted a worthless fuck stain like her in their halls. Riley, who was always in trouble, who had agreed to let the young girl into her room and pretended to like her. Pretended to care. Pretended that they were friends. Pretended that she had enjoyed having sex with someone as spectacularly bad at it as Ellie had been. All because she needed the extra credit to keep her grades up.

Riley broke her heart.

Riley who watched her cry. Who saw her little heart snapping almost in half from the betrayal. Who said nothing while she heaved and sobbed from the anguish. Who left without a word while she wailed. She had reached for Riley, desperate to reconnect, to fix this, to be friends again, but the older girl had pushed her fumbling hands away. Riley who wouldn’t even say a word as she walked out the door, no matter how desperately Ellie begged her to just talk to her, just tell her what she had done so wrong.

Riley left her alone.

Ellie went looking for Marlene, trying to find out what had happened to Riley, still hoping to find some way to fix things. But Marlene had left the city too. Off to greener pastures, they said. Boston was a lost cause for the Fireflies.

Ellie was adrift.

With no one to help guide her, Ellie floundered. She flunked out the school before the end of that semester. She had tried to turn to her few civilian friends for help, but Melody and her boyfriend were only barely scraping by. Cherry couldn’t risk her new position at the Officer’s Mess by taking in a girl the military had just kicked out. Nobody else would even talk to her. Nobody else would even take the time to lie to her.

Ellie was alone.

Too young for any work details, too little to work the few menial jobs available to unskilled, underage labor, she was homeless and on the streets by the end of the first night of her expulsion. The only work available to a small, teenage girl like her was something she had so far refused to do. Her mother had expected so much of her. Too much, given what she had to work with. But no matter how desperate things got, she didn’t want to start sucking cocks in back alleys for ration cards. Three days now she’d be able to resist the offers from soldiers, workers, pimps. Three days. But it was getting harder every day. She was afraid tomorrow would be the day. She had to eat sooner or later. She would find an alley to claim as her own tomorrow. But first she would burn her mother’s letter, the very first thing in the morning. She didn’t want to be reminded of how badly she had failed the woman who had given up everything to bring her into this world.

Ellie was starving.

A thumping down the hallway causes her to awake with a start. This building is condemned. She can’t get a proper place to live. She has no connections and FEDRA punishes dropouts and flunkouts like her by endlessly denying them a spot on the housing lists. She had no choice but to move into a place like this. It isn’t safe for a young girl like her to sleep on the streets, not where any passing creep can grab her and carry her away to God knows where, for God knows what.

The thumping happens again. Closer this time. She has not imagined it. There are muffled shouts. A sharp cry as a blow is struck. A baton against flesh.

“Oh fuck,” she says, the fog of sleep retreating, giving way to the understanding of what is happening. Coherent thoughts begin to reach her hungry, tired mind.

This place is an ‘off-limits’ building, a flophouse for vagrants. and it is being rousted by the army in the middle of the night. They’re here to round up stragglers.

Ellie is a straggler now.

She scrambles to her feet. She has slept in her shoes. She jerks the laces tight. She shoves the ratty blanket into her little backpack. Tries to gather up her meager possessions and the only can of food she has. Her hands are fumbling. She is terrified. Prison won’t be something she can survive. Not at her age.

The next thump comes from just outside her door. She hears the man in the adjacent room shouting defiantly at the soldiers who have barged into his room. There are three quick gunshots. The shouting stops.

“Oh Jesus! Oh God!” She runs across the room, she has to get out of her. Her room is next.

The window is locked, rusted shut. Rain pours down in sheets outside. She reaches for her switchblade. She’ll have to pop the lock and she’ll have to do it quick. With any luck, she can dash down the fire escape and disappear into the night.

Her shaking fingers don’t find her knife. Too late she remembers that she pawned her mother’s switchblade for a few cans of mixed vegetables just the day before. She hated herself for doing it, but she was so damn hungry at the time. Anything was better than the dark alleys, the leering faces, the disgusting things she will have to do for those men tomorrow if she manages to escape tonight. The only alternative to starving.

She looks around, eyes wide, searching fruitlessly for another way out.

The door bursts inward. A soldier in a white hazmat suit has smashed it from its hinges with a small, heavy portable ram. Another soldier behind him points a gun at her. A flashlight is mounted on the gun. It blinds her in the darkness of the filthy room.

“Get down on your knees! Hands on your head!”

Ellie has no choice but to comply. She knows she will be shot if she doesn’t.

Ellie is their prisoner.

They aren’t gentle with her. Her small wrists are secured painfully behind her back with plastic zip ties. They drag her stumbling and lurching down the hallway, down the stairs, she curses them all the way. Her hands and fingers are numb, tingling, useless.

Outside, in the rain, on the sidewalk covered with oily, greasy puddles, she is shoved down hard, her knees slamming against the concrete. She curses the chickenshit limpdick cocksucking motherfucker who does this to her. She is thumped in the back of her head for it. The man next to her hisses at her to shut the fuck up, to not make it worse for herself. It’s hard to listen to him, she is seeing stars, her ears are ringing. There are several people in this row, all stragglers like her. All lined up to be tested and tried for the crime of being homeless in Boston on this cold, rainy night. She blinks several times, trying to bring these people and the world around her back into focus again.

One of the techs climbs out of the van at the curb. He has an electronic cordyceps tester in his hand. He hates being out in the rain. He hates working the night shift. His name is Corporal Robert Pierce, but everyone called him Bobby when she still knew him. He was an upperclassman at the preparatory school with her when she first arrived. He does not recognize her.

The man kneeling next to her whispers to her to be cool. Just be cool.

Bobby starts with her. She is the first in line. He presses the device to the back of her neck. She wonders how long she will last in prison. Not long, she thinks. Maybe a week at most. Somebody will kill her just to build a reputation from it.

Bobby shouts something. There’s an obnoxious electronic tone going off behind her. The man next to her tries to scramble away from her. She doesn’t understand what’s going on. Everything is happening too fast.

“Positive! We got a positive!” Bobby is screaming. Soldiers around him are shouting, ready to race into action. They have drilled for this.

Ellie needs a moment before she understands that they’re talking about her.

A hand encased in a thick, black, rubber glove grabs the back of her head, pushes her face against the wet sidewalk. She sputters. Filthy water has found its way up her nose. She gags. There is a cigarette butt floating in the puddle around her face.

“Get the fuck off me!” she hears someone shout. It sounds like her voice, but much too high. Much too shrill. Whoever that is, she sounds terrified.

A man in an army uniform kneels down beside her. “Sorry kid,” he says.

She feels the needle going into the side of her neck, into her artery. She goes rigid, cold with fear.

_Oh God. Oh God, they’re going to kill me. They think I’m infected. They’re killing me._

The man next to her is screaming at the soldier holding him down, screaming that he has to get away from her. She’s doesn’t understand it. She’s never hurt anyone in her life. She feels a warm wetness and realizes that she has pissed herself in terror.

Ellie is dying.

Barbed wire is being pulled through her veins. Her body convulses. Her head pounds against the sidewalk, bruising her. She wishes Riley was here. She can hear herself screaming, a choked, strained cry. It wasn’t supposed to hurt. They tell everyone the shot is painless. Like everything else anyone ever told her, it is a lie.

_It’s not fair. It’s not fair! I never had a chance!_

After a minute, she lies still. Her body grows cool quickly in the damp night air. The spreading puddle of her urine is freezing cold against her belly now. The tears on her cheek are washed away by the rain splashing up from the dirty sidewalk.

They test the others, no one else is infected. They’re going to prison. She isn’t. No one knows or cares that Bobby forgot to reset the machine after changing the old batteries for fresh ones while he sat inside the truck, away from the rain, before using it on her. She was a false positive. She was never infected. Bobby made a mistake. He realized it as they began to inject her but didn’t want to get himself in trouble. He keeps this knowledge to himself. Under martial law, it’s always smarter to keep your mouth shut.

“Take her to the incinerator,” she hears Bobby say. Another voice calls it in, requests a meat wagon for one body: female, Caucasian, adolescent, maybe fourteen years old. Be advised: Biohazard. Take precautions.

They pick her up, carry her a few feet, drop her into an open, white rubber bio-bag stretched out on the curb. They pull the plastic lining up around her, over her. She can hear the rain pattering against it as they zip it closed. She lies inside, unmoving, unmourned.

_I’m not dead! Oh, God! Please! I’m not dead! Oh, Jesus! Don’t let this happen! Please! Don’t burn me! I’m not dead yet! God, help me!_

God has nothing to say. The rain continues to fall on the plastic bag as the crew waits for the truck to arrive. She can smell the smoke from their cigarettes. She wants to cough, but her lungs are still, quiet. The inside of the bag is cold and damp. The rain patters across the surface of it, unable to get in. The sound is oddly soothing. The bag is watertight

The cold night rain pelted her poncho, slowly seeping in, making her damp. The grass around her was beaten down by it. The earth beneath her was softening, soaking up the water, making her clothes damp. The damp plastic poncho clung to her face as she awoke. She clawed her way out of it, gasping for air.

The rain landed on her head and shoulders in big, fat drops. She turned her face up to it, pulling in heaving, shuddering breaths, fighting back tears, shaking with fear and dread.

_Oh, God. Oh, fuck._

The rain soaked her, running down her back in icy streams. She didn’t care. Anything was better than being down inside that poncho; it was too much like the bag in her nightmare. She sat up, pulled her knees to her chest, tried to arrange the poncho around her neck and shoulders to keep the worst of the rain off her. Any tears that slipped down her cheeks were quickly washed away by the cleansing rain. No evidence. No shame.

She hugged herself. She had to. There was no one else to hold her.

_Fuck. I’m soaked through. I must’ve rolled over or kicked the poncho off, maybe. The rain got in under the poncho when I turned over or something._

_At least I hope this is rain. Please, God, don’t let me have peed myself. Joel will think I’m a baby or something. Fuck. The nightmare wasn’t that bad… I hope._

They were in an overgrown apple orchard, according to the old, cracked sign they’d driven past on their way into this place. It was easy enough to see, once you knew what to look for. The majority of the trees grew in neat rows, perfect, man-made patterns so unlike the forests she had seen before. Summer was pretty much over. Ripe red apples were beginning to fall. A couple of them were resting deliciously in her belly as she sat there, shivering, trying to catch her breath, trying to stuff the nightmare down, bury it deeply, the way Joel buried everything. Or tried to.

_Should’ve slept under one of those apple trees instead of out in the open like this._

The Honda was parked nearby, covered by the camouflage netting, resting against a tree. Joel was only a few feet away from her, snoring softly under his poncho. Scared and shaking, she still managed a tiny smile. There was something so wonderfully normal and cute about him in that moment. She knew that underneath the thin layer of plastic, he was in his sleeping bag, warm, dry, and snoozing peacefully.

She looked at him and sighed longingly.

_Can I sleep with you tonight, Joel? Please? It’s damp and I’m cold._

She didn’t dare say it. Hated herself for even thinking it. Hated how trite and clichéd the words sounded, like a line from one of those trashy romance novels Riley used to read, claiming that she only did so because she liked to make fun of how bad they were, but loving them in secret. It had taken Ellie a long time to realize that about her friend.

_Tough, cool, sappy Riley’s gone. I’m all alone._

But she was alone with Joel, and that was better than nothing. Much better, actually. She pulled the poncho up tightly around and herself as she sat and tried to wait out the night. She didn’t dare go back to sleep after a nightmare like that.

 

* * *

 

She was still sitting there, in the soft light before dawn, when Joel woke up to take a piss.

He looked at her, with the dark rings under her eyes, the once-soaked bangs of her hair, now dry and plastered to her forehead, the hunched posture, the haunted look in her eyes, the poncho loose and damp with dew around her miserable, shivering body. His heart went out to her.

“Jesus. Get some sleep, kid. You’re gonna need to be rested. We’ve still got miles to go.”

Her words were a sleepy, mumbled slur. She looked almost as though she had been crying.

“I’m _trying_ , Joel. I swear I am,” she sniffled.

He said nothing, just looked away and idly rubbed at that old broken watch of his.

They didn’t travel that day.

He pulled the poncho off her, slipping it up over her head. Her entire body was damp and shivering, her clothes soaked through with last night’s rain. He gave her one of his flannel shirts to wear, the clean one, the red one, the thickest and warmest one, turning his back as she slipped out of her wet clothes with sleepy, clumsy fingers. She made a little pile of damp garments in the grass before telling him it was okay to turn around again.

She was still closing up the shirt when she told him it was safe, intentionally giving him just a little glimpse of her body when he turned around a little too soon and saw the skin of her flat belly, the hollow of her little navel, the smooth, flawless firmness of her breastbone and the edges of her breasts, two small, soft shapes, ripe and swelling, almost but now quite hidden, tantalizingly visible beneath the edges of the red plaid fabric before she slowly worked the two halves of the shirt together, pressing the snaps closed with small fingers, working slowly, in no hurry at all, fastening the garment shut leisurely. She blushed while she did this, her eyes demure, lashes lowered, her lips pulled together between her teeth, nervous that she had let him see this safe but still very intimate view of her, proud that she had kept her hands from shaking, pleased that his eyes had gone right to her flesh, taking as much of her in as he could while she slowly, carefully hid herself away, before he realized he was looking, before he reminded himself not to look at her like that, before he forced his eyes to look somewhere else. But she had seen him. Seen him seeing her. She wanted to dance with joy. She blushed from head to toe instead.

He kept his eyes on anything but her while she dressed, while he shuffled about in an uncharacteristically awkward way, rubbing the back of his head nervously, not making eye contact with her for several seconds as she pressed the last few snaps together. It wasn’t every day Joel saw Ellie half-naked like this. She hoped he liked what he had seen. He did.

He saw the little pile of damp clothes she had made, saw that her bra and panties were on the very top, tried not to think about what that implied, as she stood there in front of him, adorable and diminutive and lovely inside his big shirt. Her hands were completely swallowed up by the too-long sleeves. She pushed the cuffs up but only her fingers poked out past the ends of the red flannel. Her thighs were creamy and smooth, and only partly covered by the draping hem of his shirt. Too much of her legs were on display for his comfort. Legs so attractive shouldn’t belong to a girl her age. She crossed her ankles, tucked one foot behind the other, resting all her weight on one bare foot, her rounded hip tilted at a very pleasing angle, and clasped her little, mostly-hidden hands behind her back. She was adorable, beautiful, darling, sweet, desirable, and so very, very young to his old, weary eyes. He wanted her wrapped up in his arms with a desperate intensity. He wanted to kiss her. She needed be kissed.

She started to thank him for the loan of his shirt, but surprised them both by yawning instead. Her mouth opened wide, her teeth were white, her tongue small and pink. He wanted to kiss her. She sucked air in, stretched, her arms coming up, lifting the edges of the borrowed shirt just a little too high, revealing just a little too much of her upper thigh, showing him just a little more of herself than she actually meant to. Her eyes were closed from the intensity of the yawn, just for a moment, just long enough for him to risk a look, long enough for him to see the edges of the junction between her thighs through the upside down V-shaped cutout at the bottom of the shirt’s hem, where the two halves snapped shut. Smooth white flesh glimpsed beneath a dark auburn triangle, the shadow of a small, tender, feminine cleft hinted at under the concealment of red curls. Almost hidden. Almost. But not quite. He wanted to kiss her there too.

His eyes left her unknowingly revealed sex just a half a heartbeat before she opened her eyes again. She didn’t know he’d looked, but she would have been pleased all the same. She was desperate to show herself to him but lacked the nerve to take the risk. She feared he might reject her, might not like what he saw, what she wanted him to see. What if he didn’t like her body? She wasn’t as curvy as Tess. She wasn’t tall like his old partner. She was just Ellie, and she didn’t know if that would be enough. She was still young, still a virgin, she didn’t have the experience to see the lust in his eyes, the desire he was working so skillfully to hide from her, afraid that she wouldn’t understand, that she wouldn’t want him looking at her like that. She didn’t know the truth, couldn’t guess how much he wanted her. She was only fourteen. It was a fact that was working against both of them in different ways, but towards the same, frustrating end.

She laughed, embarrassed by how the yawn had snuck up on her without warning. She pushed her hair out of her face and he wanted to tell her to leave her hair down all the time. She was so damn pretty with that gorgeous red hair framing her lovely face. She asked what was for breakfast but before he could try to remember what the hell a breakfast was, she yawned mightily again, laughing through the duration of it, giggly, chagrined, goofy from lack of sleep. He laughed too. She was in no shape for the road, he pointed out. She shouldn’t have spent all night partying, not before a big road trip, he mock-scolded her. She kicked at him playfully, her bare feet almost slipping in the wet grass. She was tired, clumsy, not her usual nimble self. He reached out, grabbed her under the arms, kept her feet from sliding out from underneath her in the damp grass, prevented her from landing on her butt. She thrilled at his touch, wanted to press herself against him, feel him lift her off her feet. She wanted to ask him to scoop her up and hold her close. But she didn’t have quite that much courage. Not yet.

He took her hand, trying to not to smile as the way she looked up at him so expectantly, full lips parted, just a little, as though she half expected him to kiss her or something, and helped her to lay down. He slid her into his sleeping bag, zipped her up snug and warm against the cool morning air and sat close by, cleaning the guns while she snoozed. He decided to let her nap all morning, giving her a chance to catch up on her sleep. He hung her damp clothes on a line he strung between two trees, using the same length of blue nylon rope that he’d used to fashion the sling for her shotgun just a few days earlier. It was Kristi Chau’s rope. That woman had been prepared for almost anything, it seemed.

Just before lunch, Ellie awoke again. They ate and then tinkered on the bike a bit. He let her hand him the tools he needed and showed her how to check the fluids. He took stock of their supplies. She sharpened their knives. He let her tell him several particularly good puns from her joke book. He even laughed at a couple of them, which brought incredible joy to her heart. That evening, she read a few issues of Savage Starlight to him over dinner and he listened patiently while she explained the many, many nuances of the story to him. She never changed out of his shirt. She never put on any underwear. She enjoyed feeling so naked around him. He enjoyed the sight of her bare legs and the way she looked in his shirt. Tommy had always said that when a woman wore your shirt around the house, it was like you’d put your brand on her. Joel told himself that he didn’t want to think of Ellie like that, like a girlfriend or a romantic conquest. But he did.

Ellie had been smiling when she crawled out of his sleeping bag for lunch and she continued to grin throughout the day. Joel told himself it was because she was happy to have a day off, happy to not be traveling, happy to just be a lazy teenager for a while. He told himself that she was just a kid and she wouldn’t see an old grump like him in the same way he was seeing her. He told himself that because he had to. He was afraid of what he might do if he ever let himself acknowledge the hints he was detecting… the countless little clues telling him that this adoring and sexy little redhead might have a crush on him.

He prayed that they would get to Tommy soon, while he could still bury his need to have sex with this girl.

She hoped that the trip would take a while, long enough for her to be ready to have sex with this man.

He tried to focus on all the little things that needed his attention: keeping the guns oiled, figuring out how much food they had left, how much gas they had left, how much ammunition they had left, how damn good her bare legs looked in the sunlight. He frowned sometimes, even as she continued to grin and chatter sweetly about every subject under the sun. He tried to keep his eyes off her, but she made it so hard. She sat close to him for a while, a warm and adoring bundle of cheer, then she sat a little farther away, so she could stretch out her legs, long and shapely, and let the wind tousle her hair as she continued to tell him funny stories about growing up in the only world she had ever known. She asked a million questions and he tried to answer them all with more than his usual two or three word responses, even though it was hard to think with so much her skin on display. He knew he ought to ask her to put on some pants. Or some underwear at least. She was showing so much of her enticing inner thighs when she sat across from him at dinner time, shoveling food into her mouth as fast as she could, like she always did, seemingly unaware of just how high that red flannel shirttail was riding up in her lap, draped across the thighs of her folded legs as she sat on her heels, unaware that her knees were just a little too wide apart, unaware that it made him feel like the dirtiest of dirty old men. But he didn’t say a word about it, because a sick and shameful part of him liked having her so close and so undressed. And so endearingly, indecently innocent.

She tried not to think about Riley and Tess and Sam. She knew how much Marlene and the rest of the world was counting on her, but she didn’t want to think about it. Not today. She was so tired of carrying that burden. She hadn’t asked to be bitten. She didn’t want to watch Riley turn, jerking and shuddering in the rain, in the darkness. She didn’t want any of it. She wanted to be a teenager. She wanted to be a normal girl. She wanted to enjoy the wonderful feeling of being in love with him. She felt like she could fly when she sat so close to him that she could feel the heat of his skin radiating through the air to warm her. She wanted to wrap herself up in his shirt and feel safe and cozy forever. She just wanted to be with this man in whatever what he would let her today. Just for a little while. She wanted him to notice her, to see her, to talk to her, to desire her, just a little. Was that too much too ask? After all that had happened, was a little happiness too much to ask?

She wished she had something sexy to wear, not realizing that, to his eyes, she couldn’t possibly be more alluring to him than she was, lounging cutely in his much-too-big shirt, somehow looking older because of how it seemed to swallow her up. She looked like the beautiful young woman she so desperately wanted to be. His shirt. His woman. Just like Tommy had said. Joel didn’t put his sweatpants on that night. He kept his jeans on, the denim barely hiding his half-erection. He was afraid that if she leaned back just a little more, or parted her thighs just a little wider, he would be able to make out the beguiling shape of her small, succulent sex out of the corner of his vision, certain that his eyes would be drawn like a moth to a candle to her most private place, hidden between her legs, just beyond the edges of the shadows that the campfire sent dancing along her legs as she sat, resting on her heels, asking as nonchalantly and innocently as she could manage for Joel to tell her, just one more time, about Jabba’s Palace and Princess Leia getting caught while pretending to be a badass bounty hunter, bravely trying to save the man she loved, but getting captured instead and forced to become a dancing girl for the crime lord. Leia was so tough and feisty and cool… and having that happen to her, being all degraded and humiliated… forced to wear that skimpy little outfit and that leash… forced to dance and stuff like that for all those bad guys… that had to be super embarrassing for her… and stuff… right?

It was only the third time this week that she had asked him to tell her this specific part of the movie and she was certain that she was being very casual about the whole thing and he wouldn’t suspect anything. She was pretty sure she was being super cool and smooth about it, so he wouldn’t notice how much she liked this part of the story. Yeah, she was confident that he didn’t suspect she had any ulterior motives beyond their shared love of Star Wars. She was a weirdo, sure, but he didn’t know that. There was no way he could know. She was just too damn smooth.

He smiled and described that scene in great detail, embellishing it a little more than usual, taking a shameful thrill in how her plump mouth eased itself open and her cheeks flushed pink as she listened intently, absorbing all the new details like a sponge. She had no idea Princess Leia could dance in such an incredibly seductive way, writhing, twisting, and swaying, almost like an oiled snake or something. If she wasn’t such a great rebel spy and so good at fooling everyone by pretending to enjoy being a dancing girl, you’d almost think she liked being half-naked and chained up in front of everybody like that. Very sexy stuff. His favorite scene in the movie, even better than the part where big flaming hunks of the Death Star rained down from orbit and destroyed most of the ewok village. She laughed and punched his arm. He was so full of shit. No way would they kill off those adorable teddy bears! Right? Oh, had he forgotten to tell her that part before? Man, what an oversight! Surely he remembered to tell her that Princess Leia kept that slave girl outfit. She wore it for Han, just before the credits rolled. That was the last scene in the movie, her dancing for him in the lounge of the Millennium Falcon, just before the credits rolled. She even put the leash on, and told Han to hold the end of it while she danced for him. Leia was kind of kinky, apparently. Ellie said she should have known that about Leia all along. It just made sense. Joel agreed. The feisty, tough ones are always hiding the best secrets when you finally got them in the bedroom. Ellie nodded in agreement.

Ellie wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t making some of this up, but she didn’t care. If it was a lie, it was the best kind of lie. She scooted very close, eager to catch every detail as he described the last few minutes of the movie, telling her everything about Leia’s private dance for the man she loved. When Joel was done, Ellie clapped her hands together in delight. Best way to end a series, ever. She wondered if she would find any issues of Savage Starlight where something similar happened to Dr. Daniela Starr and Captain Ryan. She could only hope. She’d let Joel read them if she did. She promised. He said he’d keep an eye out for new issues.

That night, they lay in the darkness and talked for a long while under the twinkling stars, laughing, sharing, and killing time until they were no longer so horny they couldn’t sleep – each never quite certain that the other was also in a similar distressingly high state of arousal, though there may have been… suspicions. She had placed her blanket just a little bit closer to his sleeping bag than she normally did. He had pretended not to notice and let her sleep very near to him, each bundled up warmly, together but apart, and she had no nightmares at all. Neither did he. Their dreams were only good, of hope, of love, of each other.

The next morning they hit the road. Jackson was still weeks away.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s that. Twenty chapters of fanficcy goodness, all collected together and tied up with a ribbon made of pure, smutty love. I hope you guys and gals liked the story. It’s the first piece of fiction I’ve written in years and I’ve been very happy at how many comments, kudos, and bookmarks this tale has received. 
> 
> I’m going to take a few weeks off to polish the chapters in the next volume and take a nice summer vacation.
> 
> In the meantime, don’t try to read too much into Ellie’s dreams. While some of what she recalls about her days in the dorms is accurate, much of it is exaggerated by her subconscious, for better or worse. However, I do plan to cover more of that time in Ellie’s life in the next volume, so you’ll be able to compare and contrast certain events as recounted in her dreams here versus the same events as they actually occurred (in my timeline, anyway) in the next set of stories. Think of this as an appetizer for a larger amount of Ellie/Riley to come.
> 
> Volume two, entitled “Miles To Go,” will appear here at AO3 around the end of July or start of August. I plan to stick to the Wednesday and Saturday update schedule. The second volume will contain more bonding, more growing intimacy, and more smut. Joel and Ellie will even be sleeping together by the end, I promise. Look for chapter one, “Birthday Girl,” very soon.


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